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'Assisted living' is growing fast, but care doesn’t always keep up
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After suffering a traumatic brain injury in a car crash, Earl Scherrer lapsed into a coma. He wasn’t expected to live, but his wife Lydia refused to disconnect his life support. Eventually he revived and even learned to speak again.
Lydia placed Earl in an assisted living facility in Phoenix that promised 24-hour care. A month later, she received a call that her husband had been vomiting.
She rushed over to the facility and brought Earl home. Soon afterward he died in her arms.
An autopsy revealed a number of foreign objects – plastic bags, catsup packets, candy wrappers and paper towels – in his stomach and small intestine. A medical examiner determined that the objects significantly contributed to his death.
Lydia sued the facility, and in March of this year a jury awarded her a substantial verdict, finding that the facility had been careless in taking care of Earl.
It’s a tragic story, but unfortunately not the only one of its kind. The number of injuries and deaths blamed on assisted living facilities has increased significantly in recent years.
In part, this is due to the popularity of these facilities. Currently there are about 38,000 in the U.S., up from only 28,000 in 1998. It’s estimated that there are now one million people being cared for in them.
The rapid growth has made it difficult for these institutions to find trained and qualified employees, and sometimes they take shortcuts and hire people who have inadequate training.
Another problem is a lack of regulation.
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Many people think assisted living facilities are carefully regulated in the same way that nursing homes are, but that’s rarely the case. Most states have strict rules for medical-care facilities such as nursing homes, but the rules for assisted living are much more lax. Some states don’t even have minimal standards.
Assisted living facilities often have very few nurses on staff, which makes it difficult for them to make proper judgment calls about when residents need additional care. There have been cases where residents have suffered infected bedsores or become disoriented and wandered away.
One problem is that assisted living institutions have a financial incentive to keep patients for as long as possible. So a facility might not encourage residents to move to a nursing home even though it no longer has the ability to provide the type of care they need.
Of course, many assisted living centers are excellent and a great help to elderly residents. But you should always exercise caution and common sense in working with them, and make sure you or your loved ones are getting the level of care you deserve.
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Airline can be sued for failing to provide a wheelchair
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An airline can be held liable for promising wheelchair assistance to an elderly passenger and then not providing it, a federal court in Virginia has ruled.
Peggy Jackson sued United Airlines, claiming she fell in a terminal because the airline didn’t provide her with a wheelchair when she departed her last flight after a long day of travel from California to Virginia.
According to Peggy, her daughter had requested wheelchair assistance when her ticket reservations were made, and the airline had later confirmed that a wheelchair would be available at all
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stages of her trip.
The court said Peggy could sue for negligence under Virginia law.
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Colonoscopy laxative blamed for kidney failure
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More than 50 people have filed lawsuits recently claiming they developed severe kidney failure after they took a laxative in preparation for a colonoscopy.
The lawsuits accuse C.B. Fleet Co., a Lynchburg, Va. pharmaceutical company, of promoting its Fleet Phospho-soda at double doses during preparation
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for colonoscopies.
The over-the-counter laxative was pulled off the market in December 2008.
The Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning that products such as Phospho-soda should be available by prescription only and not sold over the counter.
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Violent nursing home attacks on the rise
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The number of violent assaults against nursing home patients by other patients has been increasing lately.
The reason: A growing number of criminal offenders and mentally ill people are now being housed in nursing homes. And nursing homes are not always doing all they can to protect their elderly and infirm residents against this threat.
According to A Perfect Cause, a nonprofit nursing home residents’ advocacy group in Oklahoma, there are now 1,600 registered sex offenders living in nursing homes.
Nursing homes are “serving not only
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the disabled and elderly, but more people with mental illness, behavioral problems, drug rehabbers, alcohol rehabbers and criminal offenders being placed in these facilities by state agencies,” the organization says.
Often, staff members at the nursing home are not made aware of a resident’s violent past, so they don’t take appropriate steps to prevent assaults.
And the problem is complicated by health care privacy laws that prevent a facility from disclosing information about a resident to other residents.
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Cities and states can be sued for dangerous roads
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Most people know that you can sue another driver for causing an accident, but not many people know that in certain cases you may be able to sue a city or state if an accident is caused by a dangerous condition of a road.
The law varies from state to state, but governments often have a legal duty to keep a road safe.
Sometimes an accident is caused not by driver error but by poor maintenance. For instance, street lights or traffic signals might not be working properly, or trees and bushes might have been allowed to grow to the point where they obscure warning signs.
Sometimes the problem is poor design, such as a curve that’s too sharp for the type of roadway.
An unusual lawsuit of this variety occurred recently in California. A motorcyclist was riding at night on scenic Highway 1 near Carmel when he struck a pack of wild pigs. He sustained massive head injuries, was in a coma for several months and is confined to a wheelchair.
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He sued the state, claiming it had repeated notice of the serious danger posed by feral swine and had never put up fences or otherwise acted to protect motorists.
A jury found that the state acted carelessly and created a dangerous condition that led to the accident.
At trial, half a dozen other motorists testified to their own terrifying, late-night run-ins with the pigs.
The motorcyclist produced evidence that a pig on the highway at night is invisible until it is about 80 feet away – which gives a driver less than a second to respond.
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Congress may ban defective Chinese drywall
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Lawmakers in Congress have introduced a bill that would immediately ban defective drywall being imported from China, as well as recall such materials already in the country.
The bill, sponsored by Senators Mary Landrieu and Bill Nelson, was filed in response to problems associated with Chinese drywall installed in homes in Florida, Louisiana and other states.
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The material, which in some cases emits rotten egg-like odors, destroys residential wiring and appliances and poses potential health risks, has been the subject of a number of recent class-action lawsuits. Florida homebuilders and state officials have confirmed the presence of sulfide gases in homes built with the drywall.
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Pet doors can pose danger to children
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More than 100 children have been injured or drowned in the last decade after exiting their homes through a pet door and falling into backyard pools.
That’s the result of a recent study by Safety Research & Strategies, a safety consulting firm in Rehoboth, Mass. According to the study, pet door-related drownings have been underreported because most accidental drownings are classified only by cause of death or injury and don’t identify how the child accessed the water.
“Many parents and caregivers do not appreciate the risk associated with use of a pet door, and how young children can drown, become lost, wander into streets, or otherwise become seriously injured or killed after exiting a home
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through a pet door,” according to the firm.
Carol Ranfone, the mother of a two-year-old boy who died after he slipped through a pet door into a backyard pool in Orlando, Fla., has launched a website to raise awareness about the issue. The address is www.petaccessdangers.org.
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First trial is set over heart surgery drug
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The first lawsuit over the open heart surgery drug Trasylol will go to trial next January 18 in a federal court in Florida.
More than 150 similar lawsuits have been filed, alleging that the drug, whose generic name is aprotinin, causes kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes.
More than 4.5 million patients are
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estimated to have been given Trasylol before sales were suspended by the FDA in November 2007. Because the drug is used in surgery and not prescribed, most people have no idea whether it was given to them unless they specifically ask.
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Child run over by lawnmower can sue manufacturer
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A child who was injured by her grandfather’s riding lawnmower can sue the machine’s manufacturer, according to a recent court ruling.
Ashley Berrier was visiting her grandparents in Pennsylvania and handed her grandfather a flower while he was mowing the lawn on his rider mower. He thought she had gone back into the house and put the mower in reverse, backing over her left leg. Her leg had to be amputated.
Ashley’s family sued the mower manufacturer, claiming it was liable because the mower was designed without any back-over protection.
A federal appeals court said the
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company, Simplicity Manufacturing, Inc., could be sued for negligently designing the lawnmower without a “no mow in reverse” feature.
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This newsletter is designed to keep you up-to-date with changes in the law. For help with these or any other legal issues, please call our firm today.
The information in this newsletter is intended solely for your information. It does not constitute legal advice, and it should not be relied on without a discussion of your specific situation with an attorney.
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