› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
No one disputes that 74-year-old Julia McCauley, a resident at Life Care Center of Acton in Massachusetts rolled her wheelchair outside the front door of the home where she had lived five years. She had done it on more than one occasion. But in August of 2004, her trip through the exit resulted in her tumbling down a flight of stairs. She died shortly after the fall.
Lawmakers are considering a bill that would protect nursing home residents and their families from losing their right to hold long-term care facilities accountable for negligent and abusive care.
Read the rest of this entry »
The secret of Robert Young’s death was almost buried forever with the nursing home resident who suffered from cerebral palsy. But his family kept asking questions. A year later, Young’s body was exhumed from his pauper’s grave and an autopsy was performed, revealing that the man’s death was the result of blunt force trauma to the head, according to the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times Free Press.
State Sen. Dan Kotowski said he had good intentions when he sponsored a bill in the Illinois General Assembly that would refund fines paid by nursing homes that promised to use the money to improve care at their facilities. But opponents of the bill say it is faulty and would only “eliminate the financial disincentive for bad behavior,” according to the State Journal-Register.
The elderly man at a Nova Scotia nursing home had fallen to the floor in his bathroom during the overnight hours of May 5-6. No one knows how long he had been lying there, but the light from the bathroom prompted his roommate to ring the call bell to have staff turn off the light.
DuPage County, Illinois officials are stepping up their investigations into allegations of physical abuse of elderly in nursing homes and in-home health care settings, spurred in part by the horrifying story of a nursing home resident who froze to death last month after wandering outside her nursing home, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The wife of an 80-year-old who suffered from dementia moved her husband into Elderberry Square assisted living facility in Florence, Oregon, so the staff there could give her husband the care she could no longer manage on her own. But each time she visited him over the two months he was there, something just didn’t seem right. Her frail husband was left unsupervised, during which he fell repeatedly. One fall resulted in a broken wrist. She also found him several times lying in his own waste.
The former football player and amateur wrestling legend was likely reliving his old days when he grabbed his nursing home roommate and pushed him to the floor. The force of the fall fractured the victim’s hip and injured his head, ultimately leading to his death. The corner’s report stated that complications from a fractured hip caused the man’s death and as a result the death was ruled a homicide. But it is unlikely the former athlete will ever face charges, according to The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C.
