ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER
Owner Convicted Of Involuntary Manslaughter
Dementia Patient Killed After Wandering Away
Facility Was Not Licensed For Dementia Patients
For-profit nursing homes and care facilities often put profits ahead of the level of care they can adequately provide residents. Examples of cost-cutting measures that endanger residents include reducing staff to improve profits, buying low-quality food and supplies, reducing cleaning staff, cutting back on bathing or bed linen changes, hiring lower-paid/untrained personnel, limiting the number of RNs on hand to supervise CNAs, delays in feeding, deprivation of medication, admission of more patients than the facility could safely accommodate, and inadequate safety measures to keep patients from wandering off. Dementia patients in particular will wander away from care facilities (a behavior known as “elopement”) if they are not closely monitored. Elopement places them at severe risk of injury or death. The Contra Costa nursing home abuse litigators at Evans Law Firm, Inc. represent seniors and their families against all those responsible for injuries caused by abuse or neglect in a nursing home or other care facility. If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse or neglect in a nursing home here in Contra Costa County or elsewhere in California, call us today at 415-441-8669, and we can help.
Recent Manslaughter Conviction Case
Because dementia patients require supervision and monitoring beyond the level required of other institutionalized seniors, the California Department of Health requires that homes and facilities qualify for special licenses to admit dementia patients. If an unlicensed facility admits a dementia patient, the consequences for owners and administrators can be severe if that patient is injured. One California appellate court recently upheld the conviction of an assisted living facility owner on charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of a dementia resident in part because the jury found that the owner and administrator conspired to admit dementia patients to increase profits even though they knew they were not licensed to accept such patients.[1] Several employees at the facility allegedly told investigators that the business’s attempts to admit dementia patients was “an accident waiting to happen.” When it happened, the patient died. He was a 65-year-old with dementia who wandered away from the facility and was killed when an automobile struck him on a dark stretch of a road over 10 miles from the facility. While the patient was known to refuse to sign out or wear a GPS monitor, that “did not eliminate the licensee’s obligation to protect him,” the court’s ruling reads. “If the facility is not appropriate for the resident, it should have evicted him,” the court said. The family of the victim has also brought a wrongful death action against the owner and administrator and that civil case is pending.
How Evans Law Firm Can Help
Always report any suspected nursing home abuse to the authorities, but also contact qualified counsel like the California nursing home abuse attorneys at Evans Law Firm to help you. Act quickly whenever you suspect any kind of abuse or neglect as the time period to bring suits for these kinds of cases can be very short. There is no benefit to waiting. If a loved one has suffered injury as the result of abuse or neglect, our attorneys will pursue all available remedies from owners, administrators and staff. Awards may include economic and punitive damages and awards of attorneys’ fees and costs to you for bringing your suit.
Contact Us
Ingrid M. Evans and our other nursing home abuse attorneys represent victims of any kind of elder abuse here in Contra Costa County and throughout California, including nursing home abuse and neglect. If you need representations, call us today at (415) 441-8669, or by email at <a href=”mailto:info@evanslaw.com”>info@evanslaw.com</a>. We can help guide your case through a jury trial or toward an equitable settlement. We handle cases involving physical and financial elder abuse, qui tam and whistleblower law, nursing home abuse, whole life insurance and universal life insurance, and indexed, variable, and fixed annuities.
[1] Evans Law Firm, Inc. was not involved in the case in any way.
