Another lawsuit has been filed against a nursing home, MyWebTimes.com just wrote. This is the third such lawsuit following a variety of heartbreaking abuse reports made last year at Illinois’ La Salle County Nursing Home, said MyWebTimes.com. Most of the allegations involve the same sexually abusive male resident and an array of female residents, most of whom were receiving treatment for dementia.
We’ve been following the issue of <"https://www.yourlawyer.com/practice_areas/nursing_home_negligence">nursing home abuse for some time. Among other reports—and, in addition to the scandals in Illinois—we recently wrote that a Brooklyn nursing home was ordered to pay about $19 million in damages to a family whose loved one allegedly died as a result of abject neglect. ABC World News reported that a California nursing home used chemical restraints—drugs—to silence residents. In some cases, this practice was fatal.
Another accusation of neglect recently made headlines when the Ridgecrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Deland, Florida was accused of, and investigated for, abuse, said the Daytona Beach News Journal. Graystone Healthcare Management owns Ridgecrest and operates 28 nursing homes in Florida, Indiana, and Ohio. In another sad case involving nursing home abuse, a former aide was recently sentenced to 10 years of probation for sexual abuse of a patient at the nursing home where he had once worked, said the Troy Record. Robert Gundersen, 52, faces up to seven years for charges brought against him by the state attorney general’s office last year.
LaSalle county said more legal action is expected following the incidents reported last year from about one dozen women who were residents at the Illinois facility and who claimed they were sexually abused by a male resident there with a history of sexual abuse, said MyWebTimes.com. The lawsuit also alleges that facility staff did not fully protect the female resident who was allegedly abused and who is now deceased, explained MyWebTimes.com. The suit seeks more than $50,000 as well as legal fees and fees from the facility, which could cost LaSalle County upwards of $100,000.
According to attorneys for the plaintiff’s estate, the nursing home allegedly permitted a known “sexually active and aggressive male resident to have contact with the victim†and also did not adequately care for and prevent the woman’s injuries, said MyWebTimes.com. The lawsuit states that the woman had a “statutory right to receive treatment and care which was free from abuse or neglect,” quoted MyWebTimes.com.
The first lawsuit from the abuse incidents reported against the LaSalle County Nursing Home was filed late last year and seeks $250,000 on behalf of a female woman resident who allegedly suffered a broken pelvic bone during an attack by the same male resident, said MyWebTimes.com. The guardian of a female filed another lawsuit resident that seeks $100,000 from the county facility. In that case, said MyWebTimes.com, the suit claims that nursing staff members allowed the same male resident to have improper contact with the female resident. All of the incidents are in line with the timing of Illinois Department of Public Health investigators report that the same male resident molested female residents, said MyWebTimes.com.
The male resident has been moved to a psychiatric facility; three key administrators at the facility have resigned; the county was fined $20,000 in 2009 by U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and $20,000 by the Illinois Department of Public Health for life/safety violations; and another—but unrelated lawsuit—was filed against the facility in March by the son of a deceased female resident who claims his mother received inadequate care during her time there, citing a fall in which her thigh bone was fractured and not reported.
