› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
Hidden video surveillance has led to formal charges of abuse and neglect of two nursing home employees in Kentucky, according to Kentucky.com. A grand jury indicted Amanda Sallee of Richmond on a charge of wanton abuse and neglect of an adult, a felony, and Valerie Lamb with reckless abuse and neglect of an adult, a misdemeanor. Both were nursing aides at Madison Manor nursing home.
Latinos who worked in California and Texas nursing homes owned by Skilled Healthcare Group Inc. who claimed they were punished for speaking Spanish while at work will receive up to $450,000, free English classes and other compensation under a consent decree from a class-action lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The punishment didn’t fit the crime in the eyes of the victim’s stepdaughter. She expressed her disappointment with the judge’s decision during a lengthy address at a court hearing. But the decision stood.
In January 2008, two employees at Radius Health Care Center in Quincy, Maine, saw their co-worker Elizabeth Landry, a 25-year-old nursing assistant, slapping a man on the head with an open hand, swearing at him and calling him and obscene name. She also reportedly pulled the man out of his wheelchair and threw him into a bed. The man was a stroke victim and used a wheelchair for mobility.
Silver Lake Care Center of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, voluntarily closed its doors earlier this month after mounting complaints of physical and verbal abuse, financial woes, unresolved staffing issues, and numerous lawsuits alleging neglect and wrongful death, according to the News Examiner-Enterprise.
The son and daughter of a 46-year-old woman are suing the Knoxville, Tennessee, nursing home where their mother lived, for $7 million in compensation and $28 million in punitive damages for nursing home neglect that resulted in the death of their mother, according to Knox News.
The man accused of sexually abusing a woman with mental disabilities has been ruled competent to stand trial, according to the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal. Preston Shaw, 65, and the victim were both residents of Hillcrest Centre for Health and Rehabilitation in Jeffersonville. Shaw, who suffers from schizophrenia and major depression, had previously expressed to nursing home workers his desire to be close to the victim. The victim has cerebral palsy and is unable to walk or talk.
Eldercare advocate Wes Bledsoe stood among nearly 100 residents from Hot Springs, South Dakota last week, and rallied them to take action and change federal and state guidelines that impede speedy reporting of incidents that harm vulnerable elderly in the state’s nursing homes.
The meeting was his second since early last month, when he held a town hall meeting with an audience of more than 200 focusing on recent allegations of sexual abuse of residents at Castle Manor by a nursing home aide at the home. According to family members, it took days for the nursing home to file the sexual abuse claims with the Department of Health, and the accused abuser continued to work at the home for weeks after the initial complaint was made.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of a class of thousands of residents at 27 Colorado nursing homes operated by SavaSeniorCare claims that state officials allowed the nursing homes to operate without insurance in violation of state law, leaving residents without means to sue when they are abused and neglected, according to the Denver Post.
The 87-year-old nursing home resident likely meant no harm. He suffers from dementia and wouldn’t give a belt used to assist residents with walking back to certified nursing assistant Sharoia D. Hill. But Hill became frustrated with his aggressive behavior. She decided to remedy the situation by hitting the frail man with a closed fist. Now the 28-year-old nursing aide faces up to five years in prison on a Class 3 felony charge, according to The News-Gazette.
A former manager at a Cambridgeshire, England nursing home says he is the victim of sabotage by disgruntled staff members who didn’t agree with his measures to improve the facility’s poor standards. But the claims made against him are mounting, according to the Cambridge News.
