Jury awards family $14 million — largest payment in at least a decade — for Danvers nursing home negligence - Health & wellness - The Boston Globe

Jury awards family $14 million — largest payment in at least a decade — for Danvers nursing home negligence - Health & wellness - The Boston Globe: "By the time Genevieve Calandro was rushed to the hospital after falling out of her wheelchair at a Danvers nursing home, doctors found a festering pressure sore on her back, acute appendicitis, a urinary tract infection so severe it had invaded her blood stream, kidney failure, uncontrolled diabetes, and severe dehydration.

Despite treatment, the infections prevailed, and the 90-year-old woman died a month later, in August 2008.

Now a Middlesex County jury has decided that the care Calandro received at the nursing home, Radius HealthCare Center, was so grossly negligent, that this week it awarded Calandro’s family $14 million. It is the largest nursing home-related verdict in Massachusetts in at least the last decade, according to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, which tracks jury awards.

Calandro’s youngest son, Garry Calandro, said Wednesday that no amount of money could compensate the family for his mother’s pain, suffering, and death, but he hoped the large amount would capture the attention of the nursing home industry.

“That is the only way to send a message, or to punish people, and somebody in that business certainly needs to look at it with a more serious manner than just as a big money-making business,” he said.

Most of the award, $12.5 million, was for punitive damages, with the jury indicating on Tuesday that the “gross negligence” was a “substantial contributing factor” in causing the woman’s death.

Lawyers said it was highly unusual for a jury in Massachusetts to award punitive damages in nursing home lawsuits.

Calandro said his mother was a happy woman who devoted her life to family and seldom complained, yet they could tell she was not feeling well in June 2008, and kept asking staffers at the nursing home about their concerns. They were repeatedly assured there was no problem.

“They were telling us that there was a virus going through the nursing home, that’s why she had a fever, and that everything was under control, that they were on top of everything,” he said."



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