Nursing Home Abuse Liability

During the last several years nursing home companies that run facilities throughout the state of Florida have become very smart in the way they try to avoid personal responsibility in the care and treatment of residents.  What they’ve done is the following.

First of all, they’re utilizing corporate structure laws to avoid being responsible for nursing home abuse and neglect.  The way they do this is they’ll set up a limited liability corporation, that’s the licensee of the nursing home.  They’ll also have a management company that’s a separate limited liability corporation.  They’ll have another company that’s the landlord.  So all the money that goes into the nursing home from Medicaid or Medicare, or the insurance that pays for the nursing home resident, flows directly out of the nursing home facility to a landlord that’s owned by the same principles that own the nursing home, by the way.  It goes out to a management company that’s also comprised of the same guys.

And so the problem is, is you’ve got these standalone limited liability corporations that own and run these facilities.  They don’t have any money, and they don’t carry much insurance, and therefore, their response to a nursing home resident’s abuse and neglect in a civil claim that a firm like mine would bring is that we have no money to satisfy a judgment.

Well, this has gone on for the last several years, and what we say is enough is enough.  We have determined and found ways to pierce the veil of this deceit and this avoidance of responsibility.  We have found ways to get beyond this byzantine empire, this byzantine structure that’s been set up by these smart corporate lawyers to avoid their nursing homes becoming responsible for this neglect, and we pursue these claims vigorously.  

It takes longer, it’s more expensive, and it’s harder fought litigation, but at Morgan & Morgan, we are out there to make sure that nursing home residents in the worst cases of abuse and neglect receive appropriate representation in these cases, because it’s simply not right.  And as a society, our most vulnerable citizens are the elderly.  And that somebody at the end of the day needs to stand up for their rights, even if it’s hard, even if it’s expensive, and even if the smart corporate lawyers at these silk stocking law firms have set up big corporate shields, we’re going to still go out there and try to work those cases, try them if we have to, and bring these nursing homes and the limited liability corporations that they’re protecting these nursing homes – we’re going to bring them to justice.