FIRM PHILOSOPHY

Lawsuits against long-term care facilities (nursing homes, board and cares and assisted living) are a necessary and very important vehicle for improving the manner in which the industry treats our vulnerable elderly. The way the system is presently set up, corporations play the "numbers game" by betting that at least one of the following factors will prevail:

1. Most of today's elders are wary of courtrooms and attorneys and are less likely to sue on their own behalf or on behalf of an abused spouse.

2. The children of abused elders often feel guilty for placing their parent(s) in the facility and/or for not visiting "enough". They are less likely to sue because they feel at least partly responsible.

3. The facility will convince the family that their elderly loved one was too "old" and/or too "sick" and/or "would have died anyway."

The true facts are that in most cases, bedsores, dehydration, broken hips, malnutrition and similar maladies are the result of improper care and could have been avoided. The general rule is that unless they were clinically unavoidable, the very presence of any of these conditions constitutes elder abuse.

Our law firm believes that it is crucial for people to fight against this cynical view by demanding that the regulatory bodies that oversee long-term care (on the state level it is the California Department of Public Health and on the federal level it is the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) take a stronger enforcement stance in working with the public. It is through lawsuits (and the media they attract) that this message gets out.

Lawsuits allow the public to fight the big guys by hitting them where it hurts, in their pocketbook -- and in order to do that the families of elder abuse victims must be willing to fight. Consider the fact that the largest long-term health care corporations pay multi million dollar penalties for Medicare fraud without missing a step. This shows how much money they are making by neglecting elders. I had a case a number of years ago where another corporation went into bankruptcy, but before doing so they were settling elder abuse cases left and right for hundreds of thousands of dollars just so that they would have a more organized bankruptcy. That's scary! By prosecuting valid lawsuits with facts that will sometimes chill you to the bone, we hope that over time the industry will get the message, not for any altruistic reasons, (although that would be nice), but rather because it does not pay for them to neglect the vulnerable elderly.

In prosecuting elder abuse claims, we do a complete check on the corporate history–of great import since in recent years the industry strategy is to set up numerous limited liability corporations that pay management fees to an “independent” corporation(involving the same people as the LLC’s) so as to shield themselves from large liability judgments. We also investigate the particular nursing home's compliance record with state and federal laws, do a complete review of the specific medical chart at issue with the aid of geriatric doctors and/or nurses and use investigators to find ex employees who may tell the truth about what was really going on at the facility/corporation.

It is our hope that there will be more and more media coverage on this important issue and that existing laws are strengthened. In California it is a hard fought battle as we are up against powerful and well financed foes who spend much time and money lobbying the politicians. It is imperative that the public lets the elected political representatives know what an important issue this is. There is nothing like true stories by the public to battle the corporate owners lies.

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