Nursing home penalties limited
In a victory for nursing homes, the California Supreme Court says patients harmed by a facility’s failure to comply with multiple state safety standards can collect only a single $500 penalty, in addition to damages a jury may award for the home’s negligence.
The ruling came in the case of a 91yearold Riverside County man who broke his hip and was nearly immobile when he was taken to an HCR ManorCare nursing home in Hemet in 2008. During John Jarman’s three months at the home, his lawsuit alleged, the staff ignored his pushbutton requests for nursing help and often left him in soiled diapers.
He said he suffered sores that took more than a year to heal after his discharge.
Jarman died before his case went to trial, and his suit was taken over by Janice Jarman, his daughter. In 2011 a jury found that the nursing home had violated safety standards 382 times, without specifying the violations, and awarded $250 per violation, a total of $95,500. Jurors also awarded $100,000 in damages for general negligence in the home’s care of Jarman, and the trial judge later awarded the family nearly $370,000 in attorneys’ fees.
In a 52 ruling Monday, the state’s high court said a 1982 California law that allowed nursing home patients to sue for violations of state safety standards, with penalties of up to $500, must be interpreted to allow only a single such penalty per case. The ruling eliminates nearly all of the $95,500 penalty award, but does not affect the damages for negligence or attorneys’ fees.
The majority opinion by Justice Ming Chin noted that two other California laws allow patients to collect penalties for “each and every violation” of safety rules if state health officials fail to act, but there was no such language in the 1982 law, which authorized patients to sue nursing homes for violating safety standards.
Some actions, Chin noted, can violate multiple standards — for example, not allowing a visit by a pastor or priest could violate the patient’s right to be visited by clergy or others of a critically ill patient’s choos
ing, the right to participate in community activities and the right to be treated with dignity.
Seriously mistreated patients can also seek compensation under the state’s Elder Abuse Act, which provides up to $250,000 in damages, Chin said. He also noted the compensation for attorneys’ fees in this case and rejected arguments that his reading would make the law “toothless.”
But dissenting Justice MarianoFlorentino Cuéllar said the majority’s view of the law “leaves a few teeth awkwardly hanging in the mouth after pulling most of them out.”
Under the ruling, a nursing home “will face the same potential liability whether it violates one right or one hundred,” said Cuéllar, joined by Justice Goodwin Liu. He said the ruling “deprives nursing home residents of an important tool to deter and vindicate violations of their rights” at a time when state regulators have fewer resources available to inspect the homes and enforce the law.
JayAllen Eisen, a lawyer for Jarman’s daughter, said the Elder Abuse Act that Chin cited as an alternative remedy didn’t exist in 1982, when the safety standards law was expanded to allow suits by patients. The court “isn’t providing them the relief and the remedies the Legislature thought it was providing,” Eisen said.
But attorney Fred Hiestand, who filed arguments for the state Chamber of Commerce and the Civil Justice Association in support of the nursing home, said allowing $500 in penalties for each violation of a safety law “would pretty much shut down nursing homes or raise the cost of admission to unaffordable levels for most private patients, or add significant costs to Medicare and MediCal for patients without private resources.” The case is Jarman vs. HCR ManorCare, S241431.