Frank Hegyi, 91, was a hospice care resident with dementia at the defendant Fair Oaks Health Care Center in Crystal Lake, Ill. On June 10, 2008, he was sitting in his wheelchair in the facility’s dining room when he stood up and fell, fracturing his right femoral neck. He was…
Rosemary Jackson was a resident of the defendant’s Nature Health Trail Center in Mount Vernon, Ill., where she was rehabilitating after a colonoscopy at a different facility. She was 85 years old when she returned to Nature Trail following that colonoscopy. Over the next four days she was lethargic and…
Salvador Palmieri was 86 when he underwent heart surgery and then experienced complications, which necessitated prolonged hospitalization in his hospital bed. A week after surgery, a nurse noticed new bedsores on his buttocks. The hospital’s wound care nurse recommended cleaning and dressing the wound. However, a few months later, while…
M.A. was 76 years old when he was first admitted to a skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation after knee surgery. M.A. underwent physical therapy and began to recover. He later developed shortness of breath and was administered oxygen and other therapy. Over the next several days, M.A. experienced shortness of…
On Dec. 13, 2006, Myron Tucker was admitted to a long-term care facility in Oak Lawn, Ill. Tucker was 52 at the time and was wheelchair dependent with impaired memory and judgment. His medical history included a seizure disorder, right-sided stroke with left hemiparesis, a craniotomy and brain surgery for…
The New York Times has reported that a California nursing home fined by the state for substandard nursing care and facing many lawsuits has gone to the bankruptcy court to try to extinguish the burden of these fines and coming judgments. The nursing home faced many lawsuits filed by families…
It is not new that nursing home residents are too often at risk for abuse, neglect and injury in the more than 17,000 nursing home facilities operating in the United States. Too many times these facilities are understaffed or staffed with untrained or unskilled workers. All of this results in…
As the baby boom generation ages, the population of nursing homes is also expanding. Elderly Americans and Illinois residents who reside in nursing homes are likely the most vulnerable members of this aging society. Nursing home cases should not be confused with medical malpractice cases. A medical malpractice case typically…
It happens that lawyers who handle nursing home abuse cases, medical negligence cases, personal injury cases, wrongful death cases, birth injury cases, product liability cases and general injury cases for those who were injured or killed work on a contingency basis with their clients. That means that the client pays…
The Illinois Probate Act was recently amended to include a new section entitled, “Presumptively Void Transfers.” 755 ILCS 5/4(a) et seq. The effective date of the statute was Jan. 1, 2015. The intended purpose of the legislation was to prevent unrelated caregivers from taking advantage of elderly or disabled persons…