Earlier this month, the American Bar Association sent a letter to House lawmakers urging a no vote on a bill that imposes a federal cap of $250,000 on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases.
The letter says Congress should not substitute its judgment for that of the states, which are “the repositories of experience and expertise” in matters involving medical liability and insurance.
To read the full article and learn more about the letter, visit the ABA’s website.
The New York Verdict Search recently published Brigette Brzezniak v. Vincent J. Sorrentino and City of Buffalo, which was argued by Brown Chiari’s Michael C. Scinta.
The article, which was published in Vol. XXXIV Issue 46 (May 8, 2017), may be read here.
No citizen of New York should be required to surrender basic constitutional rights and civil protections to secure a bed in a nursing home or in a residential care facility or as a condition for adequate care. Yet, this is exactly what’s happening in many circumstances.
In an effort to prevent residents from being able to sue for abuse or neglect, nursing homes and residential care facilities are asking new and current residents to sign admission agreements that include binding arbitration provisions.
To help people understand the myths and facts of arbitration agreements, the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform created an informative fact sheet.
Read the full fact sheet here.
Note: This fact sheet is for California, but the information is still applicable in New York State.
Don Chiari, of Brown Chiari LLP, has been selected to the 2017 list as a member of the Nation’s Top One Percent by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel. NADC is an organization dedicated to promoting the highest standards of legal excellence. Its mission is to objectively recognize the attorneys who elevate the standards of the Bar and provide a benchmark for other lawyers to emulate.
According to the National Council on Aging, one in three older Americans falls every year — making it the leading cause of both fatal and nonfatal injuries for people over the age of 65.
Falls can result in hip fractures, broken bones and head injuries. And even falls without a major injury can cause an older adult to become fearful or depressed, making it difficult for them to stay active.
The good news about falls is that most of them can be prevented. To reduce your loved one’s risk of a fall, ask about their last eye checkup, talk about medications and do a walk-through safety assessment through their home, among other things.
Generation X has frequently been described as sandwiched between the baby boomers and millennials. Recently, though, this group has been recognized for being sandwiched again — this time between raising their kids and caring for aging parents.
From taking care of themselves to getting professional help and assessing financial resources, WGRZ has tips to help the sandwich generation care for their aging parents.
In late August 2016, 82-year old Ruth Murray, a resident with Alzheimer’s disease at Emerald South Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center in Buffalo, sustained fatal injuries in an attack with another resident at the facility after mistakenly walking into the resident’s room. Three days later, she died.
With the help of the attorneys at Brown Chiari, Emerald South Nursing Home was fined $10,000 as a result of the incident — the largest penalty allowable under current law.
Although this was a huge victory, fines for incidents at nursing homes are still rare. In response, Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz is joining with NYS Assemblyman Sean Ryan to call on the state legislature to support a newly-presented NYS law that would increase the maximum fine for nursing home offenses to $50,000. Ryan has sponsored the measure at the state level.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — The New York State Department of Health cited Emerald South Nursing and Rehabilitation Center for failing to provide adequate care to its residents, specifically, the 84-year-old dementia patient who beat Ruth Murray to death last August. Those are regulations are in place to keep residents, like the 82-year-old Murray safe.
Instead, the department of health says the nursing home’s negligence is the reason Murray was attacked after wandering into the man’s room on Aug. 26. As a result of its investigation, the state leveled its stiffest fine — $10,000 — against the facility.
News 4 is not naming Murray’s attacker because he was never charged with a crime.
Mike Scinta, of the Brown Chiari law firm, represents the Murray family.
“What we see here is they failed both residents,” Scinta said. “They failed not only Ms. Murray, who suffered the fatal injuries, but they also failed the attacker because he was supposed to be watched as well every 15 minutes, which clearly did not happen.”
A News 4 investigation into Murray’s death found Emerald South repeatedly violated state and federal regulations, which led to the facility’s one-star rating.
But the vast majority of residents at the home on Delaware Avenue receive Medicaid or Medicare, and former employees say the facility has a heads-in-beds approach — keep the rooms full and the money flowing.
An investigation into the beating death of Murray by the department of health found multiple deficiencies.
“This family has been devastated by the manner in which their mother died,” Scinta said. “And to see a report like this, and to know that there’s ongoing systemic problems in the facility, it makes them very angry and very frustrated with the fact that this facility can do this time and time again.”
The department of health found Emerald South did not ensure each resident received adequate supervision to prevent accidents. As one example, they failed to check on Murray’s attacker every 15 minutes, which was part of his care plan.
The department’s investigation found the CNA (Certified Nurse Assistant) who was assigned to Murray’s attacker on the day of the beating was out of the building running an errand for her team leader, and the next time she laid eyes on the man was after the incident.
“The facility chooses to under staff itself,” Scinta said. “They don’t have enough hands on deck to take care of the residents, and in turn what happens is things get missed or ignored, and simply not done. And people aren’t protected. Because of their failures, Ms. Murray is now dead.”
When it came to reporting the fatal beating to authorities, Emerald South failed three as well, the state report showed.
The department of health wasn’t notified about the incident until Aug. 28th, two days after it happened — when the report said they should have been notified within 24 hours.
Buffalo attorney Richard Sullivan represents Emerald South, but has not returned repeated calls for comment about the state’s investigation or the impending lawsuit by attorneys representing Murray’s family.
Willie Faulkner lived across the street from the 84-year-old man.
Faulkner cared for his neighbor, and was ultimately one of the reasons why he was sent to Emerald South after he could no longer care for himself.
“That’s not the type of facility that I would go to if I had to go to one,” said Faulkner, who visited his neighbor and other residents at Emerald South.
It’s a place Faulkner says he remembered all too well for all the wrong reasons.
“The day that I went in, he was in the room with nothing,” Faulkner said of his visit with his neighbor. “He didn’t have anything. There was nothing on the bed. He may have had a pillow behind him, but it didn’t have a pillow case on it. It didn’t have no sheets on the bed, no nothing on the bed. No dresser.
“There was nothing. Bare walls and a bed. And his robe from the hospital,” he added.
There were other deficiencies about the facility’s care of Murray and her attacker, some of which were not connected with the violent incident.
The state found Emerald South had no documented evidence of an admission agreement for Murray’s attacker, which is a state requirement.
The department’s investigation led them to the nursing home’s business office, where a female employee told the investigator Murray’s attacker’s agreement “fell to the wayside,” and that she was “very busy because she was working for both buildings.”
“We know that this is pervasive throughout the facility because of their failure to staff the facility and their failure to follow the care plans, other residents are affected, and other residents in that building are at risk,” Scinta said.
“They want heads in beds, and they want to keep their facilities full, and that’s the way they operate their business,” he said. “But in doing that, in exchange of that, they have to have enough people there to properly care for these individuals.”
Short of closing the facility, the New York State Department of Health could not penalize Emerald South Nursing and Rehabilitation Center any more severely.
After the death of nursing home resident Ruth Murray, who was severely beaten by another dementia patient, the state leveled the stiffest fine allowed by law.
Jail deputies said the inmate was yelling and moving around even after they strapped him face down to a stretcher with a spit mask knotted around his neck and a pillowcase over his head. They said he continued to resist as nine deputies escorted the stretcher to an ambulance summoned to the Erie County Holding Center.
The Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s Office, headed by Lori Pettit Rieman, will serve as a special prosecutor to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against Erie County Holding Center deputies in the death of an inmate in 2012.
The state Commission of Correction, which investigates in-custody deaths, recommended a criminal investigation after determining that inmate Richard A. Metcalf Jr. died of asphyxia at the hands of jail deputies, not a heart attack as the county medical examiner determined at the time. Read More…..
Mike Scinta of Brown Chiari spoke with WIVB Channel 4’s Dave Greber regarding surveillance videos, which dispute statements from the Erie County Holding Center staff.
