Nursing facilities hit by increasing number of virus-related lawsuits alleging negligence

As COVID-19 cases in nursing homes continue to mount, families of residents and workers are going to court alleging negligence by some facilities.

In addition, state and federal regulators have started investigations, and workplace safety citations over a lack of personal protective equipment for health care workers are also trending, which some legal experts say could trigger more lawsuits. 

With regards to litigation alleging negligence in some nursing home facilities, “the stories you are hearing is what’s going on,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, Thousand Oaks, California-based president of the California Association of Long Term Medicine. 

“There is nothing they could have done to prevent Kirkland,” he said of the first documented COVID-19 outbreak in a nursing home, adding that once other nursing homes nationwide caught on to the dangers of the virus, “why weren’t they testing their staff and providing PPE for all of them?” 

The examples of lawsuits and investigations are many.

In July the family of a housekeeper who worked at a nursing home in Beaver, Pennsylvania, and died of COVID-19 filed a lawsuit against The Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, which was linked to at least 80 COVID-19 deaths and has a “long history of infection control violations,” according to a statement from Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky P.C. in Philadelphia. The case was moved to federal court in September. 

That suit, which alleged negligence and a “long pattern” of unsanitary conditions at Brighton, preceded the execution of search warrants by the FBI in September. According to media reports documenting the raids, the FBI is also investigating another western Pennsylvania facility, Mt. Lebanon Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Allegheny County. Both nursing facilities were linked to dozens of COVID-19 deaths. Officials at the facilities, which share the same ownership, could not be reached for comment. 

In another lawsuit filed in July, the family of an 87-year-old resident at Redwood Springs Healthcare Center in Visalia, California, who died of COVID-19 is suing the facility alleging elder abuse, willful misconduct and wrongful death.

As of the summer at least two lawsuits had been filed against the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, epicenter of the first documented nursing home outbreak. 

In September, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined the Gateway Care & Rehabilitation Center skilled nursing facility in Hayward, California, $23,430, claiming that it exposed nurses and housekeeping workers to COVID-19 when it failed to follow requirements for providing necessary personal protective equipment.

Meanwhile, the New York State Senate in late September called for investigations into nursing home deaths.

Legal experts say to expect more investigations and lawsuits — everywhere. 

Paralleling the litigation and investigations is a rise of immunity bills, laws and orders that shield some health care and nursing facilities from lawsuits related to COVID-19 unless negligence can be proven. As of early fall at least a dozen states either passed or were working on such measures. 

Allegations “that nursing homes are responsible for the deaths of residents in their care is nothing new. … Nursing homes house a vulnerable population,” said Sara Lord, Washington-based partner in the litigation, government investigations and health care practice for Arnall Golden Gregory LLP. “The industry is anticipating litigation” related to COVID-19, she said.  

“I think people on the outside who did not expect to lose their loved ones but have lost them to the coronavirus look for answers … and so people who have lost relatives or loved ones to COVID look to the nursing homes to see whether inefficiencies within the nursing homes contributed in some way,” she said. 

Ms. Lord said the questions are many: “Did the facility have effective infection control procedures in place? Were proper hygiene practices followed? Were people who came into the facility, as caretakers, nurses, therapists, food preparers taking proper precautions to ensure that they didn’t bring the virus with them into the facility?”