-
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Massachusetts Jury Verdicts Down
BOSTON, MA -- Eight years later, James W. Gilden remembers the day he fell down the steps at the Dedham Probate & Family Court like it was yesterday.
The 70-year-old divorce lawyer from Sharon, a regular at the courthouse for more than four decades, lost his balance on the slippery marble floor and tumbled down several flights of stairs before slamming onto the landing below.
Gilden would go on to file a negligence suit in Norfolk Superior Court against the Trial Court and its chief justice for administration and management, Robert A. Mulligan.
"The steps were concave and slanted a little bit forward," Gilden recently recalled of the 2002 accident. "At a minimum, they should've put up some kind of warning. After that happened to me, they put no-slip strips on the stairs, but the trial judge refused to allow us to even bring that up in front of the jury."
Gilden said that ruling by Judge Thomas A. Connors dashed any chance he had of holding the court accountable for the injuries to his knee, which required arthroscopic surgery and months of painful rehabilitation.
But practitioners claim there was something else at play when the jury returned a defense verdict in the case last April: a deep-seated anti-plaintiffs' bias in Massachusetts.
In fact, a review by Lawyers Weekly of the civil verdicts rendered in Superior Court in 2009 shows that the deck is heavily stacked against tort plaintiffs, particularly those who go to trial in Norfolk County and other suburban communities. And the numbers are even more dismal for plaintiffs in medical-malpractice cases (see sidebar on page 27).
According to the statistics, only five of the 35 personal injury verdicts returned in Norfolk County in 2009 favored plaintiffs. The county's 14 percent success rate was 22 percentage points lower than Essex County, which had the highest rate of plaintiffs' verdicts, and 12 points behind the statewide average of 26 percent.
"A plaintiff's verdict is so rare here that when we have one, it's something people really take note of," Norfolk Superior Court Regional Administrative Justice Janet L. Sanders said. "Norfolk has traditionally been pro-defense, but there seems to be a more pronounced trend in the last few years, particularly the last two, where the numbers of plaintiffs' verdicts have dropped precipitously."
Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who regularly sits in Norfolk County, concurs with Sanders.
"This is certainly not the golden age of torts," he said.
‘A hard battle'
Lawyers Weekly collected the numbers for this story by running every Superior Court case tried in 2009 through the state's Trial Court Information Center database. Of those 700-plus cases, any verdict for the plaintiff, regardless of the amount of money awarded, was considered a plaintiff's win.
The only region in Massachusetts with a lower success rate than Norfolk County was the Cape and Islands, which saw eight of its nine tort trials decided in favor of defendants.
Brady, who specialized in products liability defense at the Boston law firm of Nutter, McClennen & Fish prior to his appointment to the bench in 1989, keeps a log of every negligence case tried in his courtroom.
Unlike the method used by Lawyers Weekly, however, the judge defines a plaintiff's victory as a verdict in which the jury awards a dollar figure that exceeds the plaintiff's pre-trial settlement offer. (Such data is not available on the state's database.)
"To me, beating the offer is the true measure of whether someone wins or loses," Brady said. "Those numbers tell you that it's a hard battle for a plaintiff's lawyer in any case where the defendant presents some sort of plausible defense. The plaintiffs will hardly ever win by my definition of a win."
Of the 151 negligence trials Brady has presided over since 1993 when he first started keeping track, only 16 have resulted in plaintiffs' verdicts, he said. In Norfolk County, only seven of 69 ended in favor of plaintiffs. Of the 52 trials he has heard in Plymouth County, 49 - or 92 percent - were decided for the defense.
Because the likelihood of plaintiffs attaining success is so remote, Brady said, he has seen far fewer personal injury cases - especially those involving car accidents and slip and falls - go to trial over the past three or four years.
Since Norfolk County started tracking its results in 2006, the few cases decided for plaintiffs have generally resulted in miniscule monetary awards, Sanders said.
"Over a four-year period, we're talking about only a handful of cases that have been big verdicts, in the hundreds of thousands," she said. "The plaintiffs' bar has admitted to us that they only come to Norfolk if they have to for venue reasons. They're not avoiding us because of our court; they're avoiding us because of the low verdicts."
When a lawyer has the option of filing outside of Norfolk County, the decision is an easy one to make, according to Robert M. Higgins of Lubin & Meyer in Boston.
In fact, he said, any attorney who would willingly try a case in Dedham when alternative venue options exist - knowing how bleak the numbers are - would be committing malpractice.
"Generally, the belief is that the majority of big verdicts in Massachusetts come out of the larger cities," Higgins said. "The further you get into suburbs - the Dedhams, the Barnstables, the Plymouths - the perception is that you'll get a more conservative, pro-defendant jury pool than you will in places like Worcester, Springfield or Boston."
‘Same wasteland everywhere'
J. Michael Conley, who represented Gilden in his Superior Court case in Dedham, said while the news out of Norfolk County is dismal for plaintiffs' lawyers, it's not a whole lot better in other parts of the state.
"What we're seeing in Norfolk, which is an affluent suburban community, is a subset of what we're seeing statewide," he said. "It's the same wasteland everywhere you go."
Like most of the judges and attorneys interviewed by Lawyers Weekly, Conley struggled to explain the precise reasons for the bleak results. The Braintree lawyer said one factor is the pre-conceived beliefs that members of the venire bring to trial.
"There is a lot of sociology behind it, but one thing that is going on out there is that there is a huge amount of anti-plaintiff sentiment in the populous and therefore in the jury pool," he said. "I don't think you'll find plaintiffs' lawyers in love with jurors anywhere in Massachusetts these days."
Because Massachusetts is one of the few states in the country that does not allow a meaningful voir dire process, lawyers have difficulty weeding out troublesome jurors during empanelment, Conley said, calling it a "good day" if he can get a judge to ask potential jurors whether they believe they would be adversely affected by a plaintiff's verdict.
Judge Brady, who meets with jurors at the conclusion of each of his trials, said juries tend to be hard on personal injury plaintiffs, "figuring that they've got their back problems, too, and that this is another one of those McDonald's suits about hot coffee."
In motor vehicle cases, meanwhile, many jurors mistakenly believe that insurance premiums will be negatively impacted by a plaintiff's' verdict, Wilbraham lawyer Francis W. Bloom said. That perception has prompted Bloom to steer clear of soft-tissue cases, which he gladly tried a few years ago.
"You have an uphill battle before you even stand up because there is no way a juror with that kind of bias can possibly sit indifferent on your trial," he said. "There is an attitude among jurors, particularly with the economy being so tough, that if they have to struggle, why should they be generous with the plaintiff?"
Sidebar:
While it was no easy task for personal injury plaintiffs in Massachusetts to prevail at trial in 2009, it was nearly impossible for them to win medical-malpractice claims.
According to a Lawyers Weekly review of every Superior Court case tried last year, nearly 90 percent of the med-mal disputes that went to trial were decided in favor of doctors.
In Norfolk County, all 12 of the court's medical-malpractice trials ended with defense verdicts.
"I was appointed to the bench in 2001, and I have never presided over a medical-malpractice trial that resulted in a plaintiff's verdict," said Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders, who serves as Norfolk County's regional administrative justice.
Likewise, Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who has presided over 28 med-mal trials since 1993, said he has had only one trial result in a plaintiff's verdict that exceeded a defendant's settlement offer.
Jeffrey N. Catalano of Boston's Todd & Weld, a med-mal lawyer who secured one of only 11 plaintiffs' victories in the state in 2009, said the prospects are so poor that several attorneys have stopped handling them altogether.
"There has been a lot of public-relations money poured into misrepresentations about lawsuit abuse, health care costs going up, and doctors leaving the state," he said. "Unfortunately, a lot of it has been effective. There is real juror hostility toward patients and plaintiffs who choose to pursue these cases."Dolan Media Company -- Dolan Media Newswire Story
The 70-year-old divorce lawyer from Sharon, a regular at the courthouse for more than four decades, lost his balance on the slippery marble floor and tumbled down several flights of stairs before slamming onto the landing below.
Gilden would go on to file a negligence suit in Norfolk Superior Court against the Trial Court and its chief justice for administration and management, Robert A. Mulligan.
"The steps were concave and slanted a little bit forward," Gilden recently recalled of the 2002 accident. "At a minimum, they should've put up some kind of warning. After that happened to me, they put no-slip strips on the stairs, but the trial judge refused to allow us to even bring that up in front of the jury."
Gilden said that ruling by Judge Thomas A. Connors dashed any chance he had of holding the court accountable for the injuries to his knee, which required arthroscopic surgery and months of painful rehabilitation.
But practitioners claim there was something else at play when the jury returned a defense verdict in the case last April: a deep-seated anti-plaintiffs' bias in Massachusetts.
In fact, a review by Lawyers Weekly of the civil verdicts rendered in Superior Court in 2009 shows that the deck is heavily stacked against tort plaintiffs, particularly those who go to trial in Norfolk County and other suburban communities. And the numbers are even more dismal for plaintiffs in medical-malpractice cases (see sidebar on page 27).
According to the statistics, only five of the 35 personal injury verdicts returned in Norfolk County in 2009 favored plaintiffs. The county's 14 percent success rate was 22 percentage points lower than Essex County, which had the highest rate of plaintiffs' verdicts, and 12 points behind the statewide average of 26 percent.
"A plaintiff's verdict is so rare here that when we have one, it's something people really take note of," Norfolk Superior Court Regional Administrative Justice Janet L. Sanders said. "Norfolk has traditionally been pro-defense, but there seems to be a more pronounced trend in the last few years, particularly the last two, where the numbers of plaintiffs' verdicts have dropped precipitously."
Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who regularly sits in Norfolk County, concurs with Sanders.
"This is certainly not the golden age of torts," he said.
‘A hard battle'
Lawyers Weekly collected the numbers for this story by running every Superior Court case tried in 2009 through the state's Trial Court Information Center database. Of those 700-plus cases, any verdict for the plaintiff, regardless of the amount of money awarded, was considered a plaintiff's win.
The only region in Massachusetts with a lower success rate than Norfolk County was the Cape and Islands, which saw eight of its nine tort trials decided in favor of defendants.
Brady, who specialized in products liability defense at the Boston law firm of Nutter, McClennen & Fish prior to his appointment to the bench in 1989, keeps a log of every negligence case tried in his courtroom.
Unlike the method used by Lawyers Weekly, however, the judge defines a plaintiff's victory as a verdict in which the jury awards a dollar figure that exceeds the plaintiff's pre-trial settlement offer. (Such data is not available on the state's database.)
"To me, beating the offer is the true measure of whether someone wins or loses," Brady said. "Those numbers tell you that it's a hard battle for a plaintiff's lawyer in any case where the defendant presents some sort of plausible defense. The plaintiffs will hardly ever win by my definition of a win."
Of the 151 negligence trials Brady has presided over since 1993 when he first started keeping track, only 16 have resulted in plaintiffs' verdicts, he said. In Norfolk County, only seven of 69 ended in favor of plaintiffs. Of the 52 trials he has heard in Plymouth County, 49 - or 92 percent - were decided for the defense.
Because the likelihood of plaintiffs attaining success is so remote, Brady said, he has seen far fewer personal injury cases - especially those involving car accidents and slip and falls - go to trial over the past three or four years.
Since Norfolk County started tracking its results in 2006, the few cases decided for plaintiffs have generally resulted in miniscule monetary awards, Sanders said.
"Over a four-year period, we're talking about only a handful of cases that have been big verdicts, in the hundreds of thousands," she said. "The plaintiffs' bar has admitted to us that they only come to Norfolk if they have to for venue reasons. They're not avoiding us because of our court; they're avoiding us because of the low verdicts."
When a lawyer has the option of filing outside of Norfolk County, the decision is an easy one to make, according to Robert M. Higgins of Lubin & Meyer in Boston.
In fact, he said, any attorney who would willingly try a case in Dedham when alternative venue options exist - knowing how bleak the numbers are - would be committing malpractice.
"Generally, the belief is that the majority of big verdicts in Massachusetts come out of the larger cities," Higgins said. "The further you get into suburbs - the Dedhams, the Barnstables, the Plymouths - the perception is that you'll get a more conservative, pro-defendant jury pool than you will in places like Worcester, Springfield or Boston."
‘Same wasteland everywhere'
J. Michael Conley, who represented Gilden in his Superior Court case in Dedham, said while the news out of Norfolk County is dismal for plaintiffs' lawyers, it's not a whole lot better in other parts of the state.
"What we're seeing in Norfolk, which is an affluent suburban community, is a subset of what we're seeing statewide," he said. "It's the same wasteland everywhere you go."
Like most of the judges and attorneys interviewed by Lawyers Weekly, Conley struggled to explain the precise reasons for the bleak results. The Braintree lawyer said one factor is the pre-conceived beliefs that members of the venire bring to trial.
"There is a lot of sociology behind it, but one thing that is going on out there is that there is a huge amount of anti-plaintiff sentiment in the populous and therefore in the jury pool," he said. "I don't think you'll find plaintiffs' lawyers in love with jurors anywhere in Massachusetts these days."
Because Massachusetts is one of the few states in the country that does not allow a meaningful voir dire process, lawyers have difficulty weeding out troublesome jurors during empanelment, Conley said, calling it a "good day" if he can get a judge to ask potential jurors whether they believe they would be adversely affected by a plaintiff's verdict.
Judge Brady, who meets with jurors at the conclusion of each of his trials, said juries tend to be hard on personal injury plaintiffs, "figuring that they've got their back problems, too, and that this is another one of those McDonald's suits about hot coffee."
In motor vehicle cases, meanwhile, many jurors mistakenly believe that insurance premiums will be negatively impacted by a plaintiff's' verdict, Wilbraham lawyer Francis W. Bloom said. That perception has prompted Bloom to steer clear of soft-tissue cases, which he gladly tried a few years ago.
"You have an uphill battle before you even stand up because there is no way a juror with that kind of bias can possibly sit indifferent on your trial," he said. "There is an attitude among jurors, particularly with the economy being so tough, that if they have to struggle, why should they be generous with the plaintiff?"
Sidebar:
While it was no easy task for personal injury plaintiffs in Massachusetts to prevail at trial in 2009, it was nearly impossible for them to win medical-malpractice claims.
According to a Lawyers Weekly review of every Superior Court case tried last year, nearly 90 percent of the med-mal disputes that went to trial were decided in favor of doctors.
In Norfolk County, all 12 of the court's medical-malpractice trials ended with defense verdicts.
"I was appointed to the bench in 2001, and I have never presided over a medical-malpractice trial that resulted in a plaintiff's verdict," said Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders, who serves as Norfolk County's regional administrative justice.
Likewise, Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who has presided over 28 med-mal trials since 1993, said he has had only one trial result in a plaintiff's verdict that exceeded a defendant's settlement offer.
Jeffrey N. Catalano of Boston's Todd & Weld, a med-mal lawyer who secured one of only 11 plaintiffs' victories in the state in 2009, said the prospects are so poor that several attorneys have stopped handling them altogether.
"There has been a lot of public-relations money poured into misrepresentations about lawsuit abuse, health care costs going up, and doctors leaving the state," he said. "Unfortunately, a lot of it has been effective. There is real juror hostility toward patients and plaintiffs who choose to pursue these cases."Dolan Media Company -- Dolan Media Newswire Story
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Alzheimer's Patient Murdered with Morphine at N.C. Nursing Home
A caregiver is charged with murdering an Alzheimer's patient at a North Carolina nursing home with a heavy dose of morphine. Investigators say 44-year-old Angela Almore, who worked at Britthaven of Chapel Hill, is charged with second-degree murder in the February, 2010 death of 84-year-old Rachel Holliday.
Almore was indicted Monday according to CBS affiliate WRAL.
In addition to the murder case, Almore faces charges of felony abuse, related to hospitalization of six other Alheimer's patients to whom authorities say she also gave morphine."
Alzheimer's Patient Murdered with Morphine : "HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (CBS/WRAL)
Almore was indicted Monday according to CBS affiliate WRAL.
In addition to the murder case, Almore faces charges of felony abuse, related to hospitalization of six other Alheimer's patients to whom authorities say she also gave morphine."
Alzheimer's Patient Murdered with Morphine : "HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (CBS/WRAL)
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
VIDEO: NYC Nursing Home Abuse seen
Nurse Jessie Joiner landed herself in court after she appeared to jerk a wheelchair out from under an elderly patient, a fall which caused the victim to break her hip.
Nurse Jessie Joiner landed herself in court after she appeared to jerk a wheelchair out from under an elderly patient, a fall which caused the victim to break her hip.
But CBS got an exclusive look at what happens when a nurse, instead of taking care of a patient, causes incredible harm. It was a case of nursing home horror -- and it was all captured on tape.
In a video a nurse is seen allegedly dumping an elderly woman in a wheelchair on the floor.
It has led to criminal charges filed against the nurse by the attorney general.
The NY attorney general said everything you need to know about the criminal charges Joiner faces is on the video recorded by a camera placed to protect patients and staff, by the William Benenson Rehabilitation Pavilion in Queens.
The incident happened on March 20, just after 9 p.m. Joiner is seen on video pushing a medication cart but suddenly abandons the cart and heads to the patient in the wheelchair. Joiner appears to jerk the chair sharply to the left and the woman, who is 85 years old and suffers from dementia, goes flying to the ground, a fall that breaks her hip.
story VIDEO: NYC Nursing Home Assault
Nurse Jessie Joiner landed herself in court after she appeared to jerk a wheelchair out from under an elderly patient, a fall which caused the victim to break her hip.
But CBS got an exclusive look at what happens when a nurse, instead of taking care of a patient, causes incredible harm. It was a case of nursing home horror -- and it was all captured on tape.
In a video a nurse is seen allegedly dumping an elderly woman in a wheelchair on the floor.
It has led to criminal charges filed against the nurse by the attorney general.
The NY attorney general said everything you need to know about the criminal charges Joiner faces is on the video recorded by a camera placed to protect patients and staff, by the William Benenson Rehabilitation Pavilion in Queens.
The incident happened on March 20, just after 9 p.m. Joiner is seen on video pushing a medication cart but suddenly abandons the cart and heads to the patient in the wheelchair. Joiner appears to jerk the chair sharply to the left and the woman, who is 85 years old and suffers from dementia, goes flying to the ground, a fall that breaks her hip.
story VIDEO: NYC Nursing Home Assault
Friday, May 28, 2010
Nursing Home Charged $29M in Wrongful Death Death
Nursing Home Charged $29M in Wrongful Death Death
Two small firm lawyers joined forces to win a $29 million jury verdict against a nursing home for delaying treatment of a 79-year-old woman who suffered a fractured hip and bed sore that led to her death.
Edward Dudensing, who runs a two-lawyer firm in Sacramento, Calif., and Jay Renneisen, founder of the two-lawyer Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same law school and both specialize in elder abuse cases.
Trying their first case together, they convinced the jury that the nursing home chain’s chronic understaffing and a corporate scheme that siphoned profits to an alter-ego entity merited punitive damages.
“The corporate manipulation of money earned by the facility supported our position that this was an organization that puts profits over patient care,” said Dudensing.
A decision to leave three health care workers on the jury - including a nurse who raised her hand during jury selection to say she thought jury awards are too high and that punitive damages are generally not a good idea - resulted in a surprise ending to the seven-week trial.
“We went back and forth about it, but we felt good about having health care providers on the jury for liability, and we were willing to take our chances that punitive damages would be lower,” said Dudensing.
In the end, however, the jury was so outraged that it ignored the plaintiffs’ request for $10 million in punitive damages and instead nearly tripled that amount to $28 million.
Defense attorney Michael Levangie of Prout LeVangie in Sacramento, Calif. did not return a call seeking comment.
Understaffing
The case alleged that Horizon West, owner of 33 nursing homes across California and Utah, delayed the diagnosis and treatment of Frances Tanner, a 79-year-old Alzheimer’s and dementia patient, for eight days after she fell and fractured her hip. During the delay, she developed a bed sore that was also listed as a cause of death on her death certificate.
At trial, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the facility under-budgeted for staff and kept staffing at the bare minimum.
Two small firm lawyers joined forces to win a $29 million jury verdict against a nursing home for delaying treatment of a 79-year-old woman who suffered a fractured hip and bed sore that led to her death.
Edward Dudensing, who runs a two-lawyer firm in Sacramento, Calif., and Jay Renneisen, founder of the two-lawyer Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same law school and both specialize in elder abuse cases.
Trying their first case together, they convinced the jury that the nursing home chain’s chronic understaffing and a corporate scheme that siphoned profits to an alter-ego entity merited punitive damages.
“The corporate manipulation of money earned by the facility supported our position that this was an organization that puts profits over patient care,” said Dudensing.
A decision to leave three health care workers on the jury - including a nurse who raised her hand during jury selection to say she thought jury awards are too high and that punitive damages are generally not a good idea - resulted in a surprise ending to the seven-week trial.
“We went back and forth about it, but we felt good about having health care providers on the jury for liability, and we were willing to take our chances that punitive damages would be lower,” said Dudensing.
In the end, however, the jury was so outraged that it ignored the plaintiffs’ request for $10 million in punitive damages and instead nearly tripled that amount to $28 million.
Defense attorney Michael Levangie of Prout LeVangie in Sacramento, Calif. did not return a call seeking comment.
Understaffing
The case alleged that Horizon West, owner of 33 nursing homes across California and Utah, delayed the diagnosis and treatment of Frances Tanner, a 79-year-old Alzheimer’s and dementia patient, for eight days after she fell and fractured her hip. During the delay, she developed a bed sore that was also listed as a cause of death on her death certificate.
At trial, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the facility under-budgeted for staff and kept staffing at the bare minimum.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Nursing Home Sex Abuse Widely unreported
CLEVELAND -- The state Attorney General's Office received 158 complaints of sexual violence against elderly and disabled residents of long-term care facilities in Northeast Ohio since January 2006, but only two of those cases ended with a conviction, a Channel 3 News investigation found.
Most of the complaints were forwarded by the Ohio Department of Health, which received 324 complaints statewide, alleging rape and other sexual abuse of residents in nursing homes, residential care facilities and assisted living facilities.
Investigator Exclusive: Nursing home sex abuse unreported, unprosecuted
Most of the complaints were forwarded by the Ohio Department of Health, which received 324 complaints statewide, alleging rape and other sexual abuse of residents in nursing homes, residential care facilities and assisted living facilities.
Investigator Exclusive: Nursing home sex abuse unreported, unprosecuted
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Nursing Home Death Ignites Official Inquiry
CHAPEL HILL -- An 84-year-old nursing-home patient who died in February had toxic levels of morphine in her body, according to a medical examiner's report released last month.
The State Bureau of Investigation is looking into Britthaven of Chapel Hill after several residents tested positive for opiates following Rachel Holliday's death on Feb. 16.
UNC Hospitals caregivers found more than 50,000 nanograms of morphine per milliliter in Holliday's urine. More than 2,000 nanograms would trigger a positive result in employment screenings, based on federal guidelines.
nursing home probe - Health/Science - NewsObserver.com
The State Bureau of Investigation is looking into Britthaven of Chapel Hill after several residents tested positive for opiates following Rachel Holliday's death on Feb. 16.
UNC Hospitals caregivers found more than 50,000 nanograms of morphine per milliliter in Holliday's urine. More than 2,000 nanograms would trigger a positive result in employment screenings, based on federal guidelines.
nursing home probe - Health/Science - NewsObserver.com
Monday, April 26, 2010
More Abuse Complaints against Massachusetts Nursing Facilities
According to the Quincy Patriot Ledger, complaints against Nursing Homes for abuse and neglect in Massachusetts are on the rise.
The Massachusetts Dept of Public Health last year investigated several hundred complaints of elder neglect or abuse.
The Massachusetts Dept of Public Health last year investigated several hundred complaints of elder neglect or abuse.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Selecting Nursing Home - Tips
Take care to read the fine print, do research
Quincy attorney Bernard J. Hamill, who represents victims of nursing home abuse, says family members placing loved ones in the homes should be mindful of their rights and do diligent research.
Read the fine print: Hamill said predispute arbitration agreements, which bar a resident from suing the nursing home, should not be a requirement for admission. He advises against signing such agreements without first talking to an attorney.
“You do not have to sign it. It’s negotiable,” Hamill said.
Stay a while: Hamill recommends eating a meal in the prospective nursing home, taking note of how many of the residents are dressed and up for meals and what activities are available, and talking to nursing assistants and staff.
Check the report card: Massachusetts nursing homes are inspected each year and a report card of the results are online at http://webapps.ehs.state.ma.us/nursehome/. The overall information available online is limited.
The federal government runs the Five-Star rating Web site www.medicare.gov/nhcompare, which allows consumers to compare nursing homes to each other and see how they rate overall and on inspections, staffing and quality of care
Article by Jessica Fargen. See article here.
Quincy attorney Bernard J. Hamill, who represents victims of nursing home abuse, says family members placing loved ones in the homes should be mindful of their rights and do diligent research.
Read the fine print: Hamill said predispute arbitration agreements, which bar a resident from suing the nursing home, should not be a requirement for admission. He advises against signing such agreements without first talking to an attorney.
“You do not have to sign it. It’s negotiable,” Hamill said.
Stay a while: Hamill recommends eating a meal in the prospective nursing home, taking note of how many of the residents are dressed and up for meals and what activities are available, and talking to nursing assistants and staff.
Check the report card: Massachusetts nursing homes are inspected each year and a report card of the results are online at http://webapps.ehs.state.ma.us/nursehome/. The overall information available online is limited.
The federal government runs the Five-Star rating Web site www.medicare.gov/nhcompare, which allows consumers to compare nursing homes to each other and see how they rate overall and on inspections, staffing and quality of care
Article by Jessica Fargen. See article here.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
5 Million Punitive damages set in Phila. bedsores death case
In an highly unusual step for such a case, a Philadelphia jury today leveled $5 million in punitive damages against Jeanes Hospital and a Wyncote nursing home in the death of a man who developed ultimately fatal bedsores while at both facilities.
The damages - $1.5 million against Jeanes and $3.5 million against the Hillcrest Convalescent Home - came two weeks after the same Common Pleas Court jury awarded $1 million in compensatory damages in the case. The damages were awarded to the widow of Joe N. Blango, who died of bedsores in 2008, two years after being discharged from Jeanes Hospital in the city's Fox Chase section.
While compensatory damages are not unexpected in such cases, punitive damages are, according lawyer Robert L. Sachs, who handles nursing-home cases and serves as liaison to the Philadelphia court for other nursing-home litigators.
"To my knowledge, this is the first nursing-home case to go to the jury on punitive damages in Philadelphia," said Sachs, who was not involved in the Blango case.
Rebecca Harmon, a spokeswoman for Temple University Health System, which owns Jeanes, said Temple would appeal the verdict.
"There is not one shred of evidence to support any liability in this case as it relates to Jeanes Hospital, and the contemplation of punitive damages is simply inexplicable," she said in an e-mail. "We're very proud of the high-quality care provided to patients each and every day at Jeanes Hospital."
Attempts to reach a representative for Genesis HealthCare Corp., which owns Hillcrest, were unsuccessful.
Steven R. Maher, who represented Blango's widow, said that in his 25 years of handling such cases, this was only the second time a jury had awarded punitive damages.
One reason, he said, was the high standards required to permit punitive damages to be considered. A jury must find that a facility had engaged in "outrageous and reckless conduct," he said.
Blango went to Jeanes on May 21, 2006, after suffering weakness and confusion. He was 74 at the time and was thought to have suffered a stroke.
According to Maher, doctors at Jeanes failed to properly diagnose that Blango was suffering from a urinary-tract infection that, as a result, worsened and left him susceptible to the bedsores that ultimately killed him.
After about a week at Jeanes, Blango was transferred to Hillcrest, where he stayed two weeks until his condition worsened and he was returned to Jeanes. He was released to go home after three days.
Maher contended that workers at Jeanes and Hillcrest allowed the bedsores to fester and Blango to go malnourished to the point that he lost 28 pounds.
After he returned home, Blango was cared for by his wife, Shirley, before dying from the bedsores two years later.
"This verdict sends a message," Maher said, "that this type of care is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."
href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/business_breaking/20100317_Unusual_damages_set_in_Phila__bedsores_case.html">
The damages - $1.5 million against Jeanes and $3.5 million against the Hillcrest Convalescent Home - came two weeks after the same Common Pleas Court jury awarded $1 million in compensatory damages in the case. The damages were awarded to the widow of Joe N. Blango, who died of bedsores in 2008, two years after being discharged from Jeanes Hospital in the city's Fox Chase section.
While compensatory damages are not unexpected in such cases, punitive damages are, according lawyer Robert L. Sachs, who handles nursing-home cases and serves as liaison to the Philadelphia court for other nursing-home litigators.
"To my knowledge, this is the first nursing-home case to go to the jury on punitive damages in Philadelphia," said Sachs, who was not involved in the Blango case.
Rebecca Harmon, a spokeswoman for Temple University Health System, which owns Jeanes, said Temple would appeal the verdict.
"There is not one shred of evidence to support any liability in this case as it relates to Jeanes Hospital, and the contemplation of punitive damages is simply inexplicable," she said in an e-mail. "We're very proud of the high-quality care provided to patients each and every day at Jeanes Hospital."
Attempts to reach a representative for Genesis HealthCare Corp., which owns Hillcrest, were unsuccessful.
Steven R. Maher, who represented Blango's widow, said that in his 25 years of handling such cases, this was only the second time a jury had awarded punitive damages.
One reason, he said, was the high standards required to permit punitive damages to be considered. A jury must find that a facility had engaged in "outrageous and reckless conduct," he said.
Blango went to Jeanes on May 21, 2006, after suffering weakness and confusion. He was 74 at the time and was thought to have suffered a stroke.
According to Maher, doctors at Jeanes failed to properly diagnose that Blango was suffering from a urinary-tract infection that, as a result, worsened and left him susceptible to the bedsores that ultimately killed him.
After about a week at Jeanes, Blango was transferred to Hillcrest, where he stayed two weeks until his condition worsened and he was returned to Jeanes. He was released to go home after three days.
Maher contended that workers at Jeanes and Hillcrest allowed the bedsores to fester and Blango to go malnourished to the point that he lost 28 pounds.
After he returned home, Blango was cared for by his wife, Shirley, before dying from the bedsores two years later.
"This verdict sends a message," Maher said, "that this type of care is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."
href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/business_breaking/20100317_Unusual_damages_set_in_Phila__bedsores_case.html">
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)