A California Nursing Home has agreed to a $50 Million settlement for a nursing home neglect lawsuit that threatened to bankrupt the Orange County based company, Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc. In July, 2010, jurors awarded named plaintiff, Cindy Cool, and the 32,000 patients she represented, an enormous punitive damage award in the amount of $677 Million.
Cool claimed the short-handed staff at Eureka Healthcare and Rehabilitation, a facility owned and operated by Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc., routinely neglected her Alzheimer-suffering father. During testimony, Cool stated that in her daily visits to her father she routinely found him wearing urine soaked clothes. And that it would take the understaffed nursing home some 20 minutes to respond and help Cool clean and change her father. According to Cool, many patients fared a lot worse than her father.
On July 6th, 2010, the jury found Skilled Healthcare violated numerous state regulations requiring a minimum number of nurses on duty at their facilities at all times. The initial $677 million jury verdict was said to be the largest verdict awarded in the country this year and sent "shock waves" through the industry." The jury returned their verdict after a six month trail that was originally filed in 2006. However, the huge verdict would ultimately bankrupt Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc., the 10th largest nursing home company in the United States, so a settlement agreement was offered. Skilled Healthcare operates in 5 states and employes some 14,500 people throughout the country.
Skilled Healthcare, along with many of 16,100 nursing homes nationwide, is a public company and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. After the July jury verdict, the stock price plummeted to around $3.50 a share. Since the final settlement agreement of $50 Million, the company's stock price has risen 25 percent and closed yesterday at $4.38.
Nursing Homes are supposed to care for your loved ones by feeding them, clothing them, bathing them, etc. But too many times they are under-staffed, causing the elderly patient to suffer. If you have a loved one that has been neglected, abused or malnourished in a nursing home, please contact the Birmingham Nursing Home Neglect Attorneys today. Contact us toll free at 1-888-580-5176 or 205-324-1212.
