Case Story: Helping a Client Injured in A Residential Care Facility for The Elderly

We had a case a few years ago involving an RCFE. There was a woman who was a resident there; she had dementia, she had mobility issues, and they simply didn’t have enough caregivers. She wandered out of her room late at night, fell in a common area, broke her hip. They then put her back in bed and kept her there for several days without sending her to the hospital, even though she was screaming out in pain. When we were actually investigating the case, looking into things, we found that for approximately 60 residents in the building when she fell, there was one caregiver. And because of that—because of what they did, because they didn’t have enough caregivers watching her, making sure she was safe—she was horribly injured, and she passed away shortly afterward.

So, this case was a bit of an odd one. The owner had actually lost his license, and the facility was essentially removed from him by the Department of Social Services. So all the witnesses were former witnesses; they were all in the wind. We had to hunt everybody down, serve them with subpoenas, depose everybody, and get all this information. A lot of people didn’t want to talk to us; a lot of people didn’t want to be involved in the case. But we had to go after each and every one of those witnesses and get all the information we could about what happened. It took us months to find out the fact that they only had one caregiver for about 60 people. And that’s the difference between us and a lot of other law firms. We do the work. We hunt down the people we need to; we find the people we need to; we talk to the people we need to; and we get the information we need to.