Posts tagged Nursing Home Negligence

• Falling Down Stairs

  Ken Margolin | February 15, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Head & Brain Injuries
  

  Falling down a flight of stairs or even a few steps can cause serious injuries. Broken bones, head injury, and other trauma can result. In determining whether a stair injury case should result in a lawsuit, a number of factors need to be determined in addition to the severity of the injury. Stair injury cases are a form of premises liability litigation. Stair design is one factor to be analyzed....

• Reported Physical Abuse in Nursing Homes Declines

  Ken Margolin | August 22, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Nursing Home & Elder Abuse
  

  There was some good news in a 2005 study from the National [Nursing Home] Ombudsman Reporting System ("NORS"). Complaints involving physical abuse in nursing homes decreased from 5,426 in 1998 to 4,137 in 2005. According to the report, complaints of nursing home physical abuse ranked 19th out of 128 categories of complaints relating to nursing home conditions.While any decline in numbers of...

• Charitable Immunity is Unjust

  Ken Margolin | September 19, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Protecting charitable organizations from liability for the negligence of the organization or its employees, may sound noble, but is in fact, unfair. The immunity doesn't really accomplish its goals, and insures that employees of an organization involved in a personal injury lawsuit, will be sued instead of the organization. Here's the way it works in Massachusetts. By statute, M.G.L. c. 231,...

• Fake Studies for Medical Malpractice Defense

  Ken Margolin | April 09, 2007 11:20 AM | 2 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  Today's Boston Globe carried an article with the title, "Bed sores aren't always a sign of negligent care." Having written blogs on this site, suggesting that severe pressures sores are usually caused by nursing home negligence, I read the Globe piece carefully (the law firm of Stark & Stark, has an excellent blog on the subject). My radar went up when I read the sentence that "[T[he sentiment...

• Hospital Falls

  Ken Margolin | September 17, 2007 3:45 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Head & Brain Injuries
  

  A great deal of attention has been paid lately - rightfully so - to the subject of infections contracted in hospitals. Less focus has been placed on another source of serious and preventable injuries in hospitals - falls. The result of a fall down injury in a hospital may be severe. Patients are ill and often debilitated or disoriented to begin with. If a patient's condition presents any...

• Jury System Still Safe in Massachusetts

  Ken Margolin | April 10, 2007 2:45 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  I got a momentary scare the other day, when I read of a Supreme Judicial Court decision upholding a binding arbitration contract between a nursing home and the son of an elderly parent admitted to the home. Binding arbitration agreements require that if there is a dispute between the parties, resort to the courts and juries is waived in favor of submission to a professional arbitrator. The case...

• $160 Million Nursing Home Abuse Verdict

  Ken Margolin | August 02, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Nursing Home & Elder Abuse
  

  Corporate nursing home officials who bank on jurors discounting residents' injuries from nursing home abuse, because of their age or pre-existing illness, may think again after a $160 million dollar verdict in Texas. The victim of the abuse was an 81 year old resident of the Comanche Trail Nursing Home in Big Spring, Texas. Nursing home personnel assigned him a new roommate who was mentally ill...

• Staff Abuse of Clients with Developmental Disabilities

  Ken Margolin | April 06, 2007 10:55 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Nursing Home & Elder Abuse
  

  It's not often discussed outside of professional settings, but the issue of sexuality and developmental disability, poses ethical dilemmas. In fact, a book on the subject, bears that exact title: Ethical Dilemmas: Sexuality and Developmental Disability, Dorothy M. Griffiths, Ph.D., et al., ed., NAAD Press, Kingston, NY 2002. Professionals who work with individuals with developmental...

• Sexual Assaults on People with Disabilities

  Ken Margolin | March 02, 2007 10:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Nursing Home & Elder Abuse
  

  The Florida InjuryBoard law firm partner of Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, P.A., just took on a case of an autistic young adult who was sexually assaulted while in the care of a group home. The obligation of organizations providing day and residential care for people with disabilities, to keep them safe from sexual assault, is undeniable. Sexual assaults on the disabled are...

• Nursing Home Neglect Settlement

  Ken Margolin | June 07, 2007 2:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Nursing Home & Elder Abuse
  

  A significant settlement in a disturbing case of nursing home neglect, was reported in this week's Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. A generally healthy, active, older women (exact age unspecified in the report), entered the nursing home for rehabilitation after a compression fracture. Darvocet, which the woman was taking for pain, has a known side effect for many people, of constipation. Despite...