Elder abuse lawyers have all seen cases of residents being evicted from nursing homes, or refused readmission, for dubious reasons. We sometimes call it Medi-Cal prejudice; that is residents being refused admission to a nursing home for no other reasons than they are Medi-Cal recipients. One former client of our…
We are frequently asked how nursing home neglect or abuse can be prevented. There is no magic answer, but there are things one can do to lessen the odds that a loved one will be subject to physical neglect, financial abuse, or suffer the decline in health caused by poor…
Registered sex offenders, parolees, and individuals with violent pasts are living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities all over America according to the advocacy organization A Perfect Cause, which found 1,600 registered sex offenders in U.S. nursing facilities with senior citizens. Wes Bledsoe, founder of the organizations, says that…
Walton Law Firm attorney Randy Walton was a guest presenter last weekend at the annual meeting of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine in Los Angeles. Walton and San Diego attorney Bill Wilson spoke to a group of approximately 150 physicians, nurses, and administrators about legal liability in…
Elder abuse comes in a variety of forms. The abuse we hear about most frequently is physical abuse, which includes assault, battery, and sexual offenses, and financial abuse, which is usually a matter of fraud or undue influence upon a senior citizen. Both physical and financial abuse are very serous…
I recently attended a nursing conference where the central theme was elder abuse and neglect. One of the presenters was Charlene Harrington, Ph.D. of UCSF, a professor of nursing and sociology, who is considered an expert on nursing home staffing. According to Harrington the nursing home staffing picture in California…
About four years ago I had a very interesting case involving the death of a developmentally disabled adult in a San Bernardino care facility. In my case, the thirty-year old severely disabled man was found barely breathing on the floor next to his bed just after midnight. Medics were called,…
Studies have suggested that approximately one-third of all nursing home residents suffer from some form of dehydration or malnutrition, a condition that can cause or aggravate more serious medical conditions, and may be caused by elder abuse or neglect. Much of the problem can be attributed to poor staffing, whether…
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is donating millions of dollars to build small, home-like nursing homes as an alternative to the large institutional nursing homes we have come to know (and despise). Imagine what it would be like to have a country filled with nursing facilities like the one profiled…
A jury in Santa Ana awarded the family of Mary Adams $2 million after the 104-year-old was neglected in a Laguna Hills nursing home. The jury awarded $1 million for the Villa Valencia Health Care’s negligence, and another $1 million in punitive damages. Juror Rory Paster, a 41-year-old engineering analyst…