As COVID-19 continues to ravage nursing homes, the California Supreme Court recently ruled that a state law allowing residents to sue facilities for rights violations limits compensation to $500 regardless of the number of times and the resident's rights are violated, or the manner or nature of the violation.
The 1982 statute, the Long-Term Care, Health, Safety, and Security Act, was aimed at allowing nursing home residents to sue on the grounds that their rights had been violated. The decision limiting compensation was 5-2 with the two dissenting justices arguing that the law actually intended to set a $500 cap for each violation of a patient’s rights, not for the all violations identified in the entire suit.
The decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by John Jarman, who was 91 in 2008 when he slipped and fractured his hip. After surgery, he was transferred to ManorCare of Hemet, CA, a skilled nursing facility of HCR ManorCare Inc. While there, he developed bed sores that took a year to heal after his release, the suit said. ManorCare staff allegedly often left him in soiled diapers and ignored nurse call lights. He died before the trial, and his daughter continued to pursue his suit.
The majority defended their reading of the statute:
“We do not find that limiting an award to $500 per lawsuit would render the statute ‘toothless,’”
wrote Justice Ming W. Chin, author of the majority decision. He noted that lawyers for nursing home residents were still entitled to collect their legal fees from the defendants and injunctions could be issued to prevent future abuse. Residents can also sue under different laws, including the Elder Abuse Act, which provides substantially more compensation, according to Chin.
But Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, joined by Justice Goodwin Liu, wrote the $500 cap was
“plainly insufficient to fulfill the statute’s purpose to deter and remedy violations of nursing home patients’ rights. It makes little difference that the majority leaves a few teeth awkwardly hanging in the mouth after pulling most of them out. "
Justice Cuéllar cited the pandemic in the first paragraph of his 26-page dissent, which was notably longer that the majority ruling, writing that
“Nowhere has the pain of the COVID-19 virus been more acutely felt than in our state’s nursing homes.”
In a Walnut Creek facility owned by ManorCare, he wrote, 130 people were infected, and 12 have died. The majority’s decision “deprives nursing home residents of an important tool to deter and vindicate violations of their rights,” he charged.
Cuéllar noted that the Elder Abuse Act allows victims compensation only if they can prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that a nursing home was liable for physical abuse, neglect or abandonment and also guilty of “recklessness, oppression, fraud or malice in the commission of this abuse.” “This is not an insubstantial burden,” he wrote.
In Jarman’s case, a jury in 2011 awarded the daughter $100,000 in punitive damages under a different law that was not at issue in Monday’s decision. Under the 1982 law, the jury found the nursing home liable for $95,000 for various violations, an amount that will now likely be reduced to $500.
The trial court eventually struck down the punitive damages, but a court of appeal reinstated them.
Anthony M. Chicotel, staff attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, called the decision extremely disappointing and said his group would urge the Legislature to rewrite the law. The pandemic has prevented ombudsmen for nursing home patients from entering the facilities, he said, and residents now are in need of more protection than ever.
“For residents rights, this is a significant blow,” said Chicotel, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Jarman. He likened their predicament to being on a floating, melting iceberg that gets smaller and smaller.
Barry S. Landsberg, who represented ManorCare in the case, told the LA Times that the company was “pleased that the Supreme Court correctly interpreted the resident rights statute” to limit damages to no more than $500 in a civil action. “That is what the statute says and what the Legislature intended, both when it enacted the law in 1982 and when it amended the law years later,” Landsberg said.
One wonders if this means that a complainant must file separate lawsuits for each violation, and if that will satisfy the court's reading of the Act.
This article is heavily reliant upon reporting from the LA Times.
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