South Carolina Nursing Home Blog : South Carolina Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Poliakoff & Associates Law Firm : Elderly Care, Senior Care

Another lawsuit involving nursing home owners and operators Murray Forman, Leonard Grunstein, and Rubin Schron.  Forman and Grunstein are accusing Schron of  treating their company as "his personal piggy bank" and looted it for more than $100 million.   Rubin Schron first fattened his piggy bank in 2006, with $40 million that he claimed was repayment of a capital contribution from CAM-Elm Co., his family-owned business that's majority owner of plaintiff SMV Property Holdings.

Schron took $66 million more in 2008 and 2009 to recoup money he lost in personal investments, including rate swaps with Citibank, shareholders say in New York County Court.  Schron's eight children were majority owners of CAM-Elm, giving them the right to remove their father from his position, but since they did not, the plaintiffs say, they are suing them too.

"Schron is not content with the substantial economic returns that he, his family, and his companies have "legitimately" earned. Instead, Schron has resorted to theft, improper accounting manipulation, and more, against those who trusted him and relied on him," the complaint states.

Schron has also accused Leonard Grunstein and Murray Forman of "stealing from the company," so they added a defamation charge to the claims of misappropriation.   Of course, truth is the ultimate defense to defamation.

The plaintiffs seek an accounting and $105 million in damages and want Schron booted from his position and new managers appointed.  See full Complaint here.

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The Star-Telegram had a story about nursing home employees who stole and embezzled money from the residents at a nursing home.  This is outrageous and it happens quite often.  Taxpayers are the ones who end up paying for these thefts.  The nursing homes should pay more attention to their finances and laws need to be passed that provide for transparency in nursing home financial transactions.

Terry Dean West and Elizandro Valdez Arana pleaded guilty this week to federal felony charges related to their embezzlement of about $42,000 from Medicaid, insurance carriers and a corporation that operated 10 Texas nursing homes including one in Fort Worth.  They pled to making false statements related to health care matters and aiding and abetting in the embezzlement scheme.   There is no reason mentioned why they weren't charged with embezzlement.

West was working as a financial analyst for the Georgia-based Sava Senior Care Corp. in 2006 when he devised a scheme to embezzle money from Medicaid, private insurance carriers and Sava, which operated 10 Texas nursing homes and dozens of others nationwide.

West’s duties including overseeing the business managers of the Pampa Nursing Center in Pampa and the Arlington Heights Health and Rehabilitation Center in Fort Worth. In that capacity, he was required to refund excess payments to Medicaid, insurance carriers or residents of the centers.  West hired Arana to provide his name and that of an alias to use to cash funds containing the embezzled funds.

West admitted altering patient records to show non-existent credit balances and to create false names and addresses of the parties to whom the refunds should be mailed. He then issued refund checks to those newly created parties and mailed them to a post office box the pair had rented. They cashed the checks for their own use.

The scheme involved altering patient records to show non-existent credit balances and to create false names and addresses where refunds were mailed.

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Nate Taylor wrote an article for The Coloradoan about a recent verdict for a family against nursing home involving a resident who fell because the nursing home refused to respond to the resident's call light.   The fall led to her untimely death.  This happens all the time in nursing homes and is a result of understaffing.  The nursing home does not want to pay for adequate and competent staff because it will hurt their profit margins.  The staff becomes overworked and fails to respond to call lights.

While the family says her 87-year-old mother Doris Wolfe's November 2007 death was the hardest thing she's had to live through, a close second was the lawsuit her family endured suing Spring Creek Healthcare Center.  "We're just a little tiny family of four against this huge corporation of nursing homes," Johnson said, referring to Spring Creek Healthcare Center's parent company, Sava Senior Care. "You would never, ever, ever go through (a lawsuit) for any reason other than somebody had been harmed and you felt like you had to fight that fight. It was brutal."

Sava Senior Care owns at least 185 nursing homes across the country, including Spring Creek and Fort Collins Health Care Center.  They are represented by Lori Proctor.  We had a case against them last November when a resident fell three times in a 24 hour period.  The jury awarded us $200,000 in actual damages and $600,000 in punitive damages. 

Johnson said her mother stayed at Spring Creek for 17 days to rehabilitate following back surgery at Poudre Valley Hospital. Wolfe broke her ankle the day she was supposed to be sent home.

According to an investigation by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Wolfe may have turned on her call light to request help to go to the bathroom. When Wolfe thought an "extended amount of time passed" and no one answered her request, she opted to try to walk toward her walker on her own and fell and broke her ankle.  Jay Reinan, a Denver lawyer who represented the Wolfe family, said Doris Wolfe did push the button.

"As a result of staffing deficiencies, Mrs. Wolfe was left to decide between soiling herself or attempting to go to the bathroom on her own, and that eventually led to her death," Reinan said. "With a lot of older folks, dignity is important, and that's what happened to Mrs. Wolfe."

The health department investigation also indicated that Spring Creek X-rayed Wolfe's ankle and found no fracture, but a family physician looked at the X-ray results and determined it was fractured in two places.

Johnson said she hopes the jury's decision will lead to changes at the nursing home. "As scary and intimidating as it was, that's why we did this - for change," Johnson said.

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