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

Chicago's Daily Herald had an article about a million dollar settlement between a nursing home and the family of a resident who died after repeatedly falling at the nursing home in Libertyville.  The case, prompted by the 2005 death of 83-year-old Helen Menneke at Winchester House, was settled out of court after mediation.   Attorney Susan Novosad called the figure the largest nursing home negligence settlement in county history.

Menneke, formerly of Mundelein, was admitted to Winchester House in January 2004, suffering from dementia, Novosad said.   She fell several times over the course of the year, suffering a brain injury and broken bones, Novosad said.   Injuries from a final fall in December 2004 required surgery, and Menneke died in January 2005.

After Menneke's death, Winchester House instituted new policies requiring staff to more frequently check patients' wheelchair and bed alarms to ensure they're working properly, Novosad said.

"The family was outraged that this happened to their relative," Novosad said. "(They) didn't want this to happen to anybody else."
 

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A $750,000 settlement between a Pennsylvania nursing home and Francis X. Ounan has been approved by a federal judge. Ounan filed suit against nursing home chain Sunrise Senior Living Services, Inc. on January 15, seeking damages for claims of negligence and wrongful death.

Ounan's mother, Margaret Ounan Boyle, died in November of 2005 from injuries she sustained while wandering from the nursing home. The day after her admission, Boyle fell while wandering from the nursing home, sustaining head injuries. She was found with police assistance and taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with bleeding of the brain and died the next morning.

Ounan claims that the nursing home knew at the time of his mother's admission that her Alzheimer's made her a high-risk for wandering. Ounan claims that the nursing home was grossly negligent in failing to institute adequate measures to prevent its residents from wandering. Further, he claims, the nursing home failed to formulate a plan to address his mother's tendency to wander.

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A Cleveland, Tenn., nursing home company has settled a lawsuit for neglecting its patients and allowing an elderly woman to lie in her own feces for hours at a time after back surgery.

The woman, Betty Mae Hanzel of Hastings, developed an infection in her wound during her stay at the Life Care Center of Elkhorn that required surgery to reopen her incision and drain the infection and fecal matter in the wound.

Terms of the settlement between Hanzel and Life Care Centers of America of Cleveland, Tenn., were not disclosed.  According to the federal lawsuit, the nursing home staff allowed Hanzel to lie in her own feces and urine for extended periods and told Hanzel to get her own water even though she couldn't get out of bed.

Near the end of her stay at the home, Hanzel discovered a discharge from her surgical incision, but staff did not tell her doctor about the condition.  Later, she developed blood clots in the arteryleading to her lungs and a "super-infection of the bowel," which led to surgery to remove most of her colon. 

Nurses who used to work at the home in west Omaha said the facility was often short on nurses, and some evenings one registered nurse was responsible for 120 patients, according to depositions taken as part of the lawsuit.

Life Care Centers of America owns and manages more than 260 facilities in 28 states _ including retirement communities, assisted-living facilities and nursing homes.

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