In a strongly worded ruling, a Sacramento Superior Court judge has upheld a $29 million verdict against a Rocklin nursing home company in the 2005 death of an elderly patient.
Judge Roland Candee on Tuesday rejected Horizon West Healthcare’s arguments for a new trial or significantly reduced damages in the case involving Stockton native Frances Tanner.
Candee said “overwhelming” and “devastatingly powerful” evidence in the trial in May supported the jury’s verdict and damage awards against Horizon, which owns 33 nursing homes mostly in Northern California.
Make them feel it, attorney Ed Dudensing urged Sacramento Superior Court jurors who were weighing whether to financially punish a Rocklin nursing home company they had earlier found guilty of elder abuse.
Dudensing told the panel Thursday to hit Horizon West Healthcare hard so company leaders would think twice about understaffing facilities and providing substandard care.
The jury listened. In an award believed to be the largest of its kind in Sacramento County history, the panel awarded $28 million in punitive damages in the death of 79-year-old Stockton native Frances Tanner.
A Sacramento Superior Court jury on Wednesday found that an Auburn nursing home committed elder abuse in the death of a Northern California woman in 2005.
For the fourth time in recent years, an Auburn nursing home is on the hot seat in the death of an elderly patient.
In a civil case playing out in Sacramento Superior Court, Colonial Healthcare is fighting accusations that it put profits before good care in the death of Stockton native and longtime civil servant Frances Tanner.
Tanner was a spirited 79-year-old woman who suffered from mild dementia when she moved into the home in March 2005, according to testimony before Judge Roland Candee. Seven months later, after a fall that resulted in a broken hip, she was dead from an infected bedsore.
Nursing home’s egregious elder abuse results in policy limits settlement
January 23, 2009 — Ed Dudensing has settled a case for the policy limits of $1,000,000 today in connection with the death of an elder as a result of elder abuse and neglect by a health care facility. The case involved an elder who developed a massive pressure sore on her right foot and lower leg that ultimately resulted in the foot falling off while in the nursing home.
More than a quarter of nursing homes in the capital area fared poorly in a five-star rating system introduced by the federal government on Thursday.
Only four facilities in Sacramento County garnered the top rating — five stars — while 11 were deemed as “much below average” by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Agency.
Ratings are no longer just the domain of restaurant and movie critics or travel guides. The government hopes its rating system — available online at www.medicare.gov/nhcompare — will give consumers a snapshot of whether nursing homes have stellar or not-so-stellar performance based on state inspection records, staffing and other measures of quality.
“Part of the problem with the information that has been previously available is that it hasn’t always been useful, because it hasn’t always been accessible. It was hard to do a comparison,” said Ed Dudensing, a Sacramento elder abuse attorney who specializes in nursing home cases.
They had names and faces once. Now they have coroner’s numbers.
Social workers call them their “worst outcomes.”
Adrian Conway was 3 when he became Sacramento’s Worst Outcome No. 96-00441, a little boy who was beaten, burned, bruised, bound, tortured and starved to death by his angry, drug-abusing mom.
Others have followed: Christopher Cejas, 12, No. 02-03984. Alexia and Akira Noel, 3-month-old twins, Nos. 04-03525 and 03526. Keith Carl “K.C.” Balbuena, 3, No. 05-05953.
It was a perfect storm: A drug-abusing dad with more than 30 prior convictions, an inexperienced social worker and an 11-year-old girl, buffeted in the middle.
While Sacramento citizens committees examine child abuse and neglect deaths, focusing on the most extreme cases, a number of children who don’t die have their own hazardous brushes with the system. This is the story of one such child.
The girl’s case comes to light only because she sued Sacramento Child Protective Services and two social workers for what happened to her in August 2001 — five years after the death of 3-year-old Adrian Conway, and the county’s promise to place child safety over “family preservation.”
Neglected dependent secures substantial recovery from board and care and nursing home
April 18, 2008 — Mr. Dudensing has secured a collective recovery of $1.85 million on behalf of a dependent adult as the result of reckless neglect she suffered at a board and care home followed by a nursing home. “This is a tragic case, in which the mother of a daughter with cerebral palsy entrusted her daughter to a board and care while the mother travelled to see her family in Mexico. As a result of the neglect the victim suffered, she now is on life support and unable to communicate to the outside world. She will never be able to return home.”
