Case Focus: Uma

Our client became a resident of an assisted living facility because she had several falls at home and her family was concerned for her safety and well-being. She also had begun experiencing episodes of “forgetfulness”.

Several months later Uma was knocked to the ground by another resident who hit her from behind.

At the hospital she was treated for a lip laceration and bruising. A diagnostic test showed a small hemorrhage in her head was found. No surgery was performed. After several days she returned to the facility.

Complaints of dizziness continued, and her family had her transferred to another facility out of state. She remained at the new facility until her death several months later due to unrelated circumstances.

Our position was that Uma was not properly monitored and that the assaulting resident should not have been unsupervised. The case settled at a mediation within one year of the incident. This saved all sides stress, agitation, and money.

Settlement: $200,000.00

Case Focus: Brian

Brian, who resided out of state, was 53 when he suffered the catastrophic brain hemorrhage that rendered him unconscious and on artificial support for the rest of his life. He was also terminally ill with AIDS.  His family relocated him to a nursing home in New York, where they believed he would receive the level of care and attention that an individual in his situation requires.

Early on, Brian’s family noticed he was developing bed sores on his head, body, and limbs. When they raised their concerns with the home’s faculty, they tried to pass the blame by arguing that the ulcers were pre-existing, and that in any case, Brian was not experiencing any pain or discomfort, so it didn’t really matter anyway.

Brian’s family were proactive in recognizing that the home and their sister hospital were both deflecting the blame to somebody else and downplaying the severity of his bed sores. But they couldn’t fight them alone. They needed the help of a law firm with the expertise and the dedication required to take on the Nursing Care Industry, and win.

That was when they sought our counsel.

Through an exhaustive review of thousands of pages of medical records, our unrelenting team were able to prove that Brian was expressing a pain response when his ulcers were examined. We demonstrated categorically that Brian was suffering because the care home were negligent in their obligation to properly look after him. Armed with this knowledge, we went to battle.

The care home responded by denying their accountability on the grounds that every other facility the family had contacted declined to admit their loved on. This attitude of “you don’t have a choice, so deal with how we administer our care” is very typical of neglectful care homes, and we weren’t buying it. Their attitude should have been, “here we have a very ill man, with serious co-morbidities that both exacerbate the development of bed sores and prevent their healing. We should be doing everything in our power to mitigate this man’s suffering, and listen to the concerns raised by his family.”

We were able to prove that this care home was indeed responsible for the pressure ulcers that JB had developed, even in the face of their steadfast denial of abuse and neglect. We successfully held an uncaring facility to account for their lack of adequate care, and in doing so secured a remedy of $175,000 for Brian’s family to properly help him with the end of his life, pay for a proper funeral, and with an acknowledge of the harm caused to him.