Assisted living facility sued over death
Lawyer says woman, 90, ‘essentially cooked to death’ after Irma.
WEST PALM BEACH — When Palm Beach Gardens resident Benjamin “Pat” Kelley called Savannah Court of the Palm Beaches last year to find out how his 90-yearold mother fared during Hurricane Irma, he wasn’t told the West Palm Beach assisted living facility lost power and the air conditioning wasn’t working.
Four days after Kelley was assured his mother was fine, she was dead.
“She essentially cooked to death,” said attorney Matthew Schwencke, who this week filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the facility’s owner and its former executive director. In the lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, both are accused of negligence in the Sept. 15, 2017, death of Dolly Mallan.
The details in the lawsuit about Mallan’s death are new. But, shortly after Hurricane Irma roared through Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach officials responded to reports that elderly residents were suffering at Savannah Court, on Congress Avenue near Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard.
The news was quickly overshadowed by the discovery of eight dead elderly people at a stifling nursing home that lost power during the storm in Broward County. While six more residents died later, the Broward County Medical Examiner ruled that 12 of the deaths were heat-related while two were unrelated to the suffocating conditions.
Schwencke said residents at Savannah Court could have suffered similar fates. Luckily, he said, West Palm Beach police and city officials responded to an anonymous call about problems at the 114-bed facility. They brought ice, water and demands for better treatment, possibly saving some of Mallan’s fellow residents.
Sadly, he said, for Mallan it was too late.
By the time private hospice workers had her transported to Good Samaritan Hospital on Sept. 12, she had been living in a sweltering second-floor room for at least 24 hours, probably longer, Schwencke said. While Kelley rushed to the hospital, his mother never regained consciousness, the attorney said.
In the lawsuit, Schwencke recounts police efforts to help residents of the home, owned by Senior Living Properties V, of Coconut Creek. Then-executive director Michael DeSalvo rejected offers of generators from police and other city officials, including Mayor Jeri Muoio. He also initially refused to move second-floor residents to the first floor where it was cooler, explaining that residents were in wheelchairs and the elevator wasn’t working.
“They are all a bunch of whiny crybabies and have been before the storm,” DeSalvo is said to have told police officers.
DeSalvo, who no longer works at the facility, declined comment on the lawsuit when reached by telephone. “I already have spoken to you guys about hurricane stuff last year,” he said. “Thanks for your time. You have a great day.”
Attorney Constantine Nickas, who represents Savannah Court, didn’t return a phone call for comment. Neither did the new director of the facility.
The Florida Department of Children & Families investigated allegations of neglect at the home, said spokeswoman Paige Patterson-Hughes. The investigation began Sept. 13, 2017, and was closed seven days later. The results are confidential, she said.
Records of the state Agency for Health Care Administration, which regulates nursing homes, don’t indicate that it investigated Savannah Court in the days after the hurricane.
In October 2017, it found “the facility failed to provide a safe and comfortable living environment to the residents by not ensuring its existing mechanical systems were maintained in good working order.”
But the finding, linked to the malfunctioning of one resident’s air conditioner, doesn’t appear to be prompted by problems city officials discovered after Hurricane Irma. During the same inspection, an agency inspector noted that Savannah Court’s pest control was inadequate.
The violations were corrected by Jan. 25, the agency reported.
In the wake of the deaths at the Hollywood nursing home, the state began requiring nursing homes to have backup power systems. According to the health care agency, Savannah Court has a fixed generator, a portable generator and portable cooling units.
Schwencke said such improvements are unlikely to impact the lawsuit.
He is seeking damages for Kelley and his sister, Karen Voorhees, who lives in Texas. If Savannah Court administrators had called Kelley, he would have taken his mother to his home where she would have been safe. Instead, they told him nothing.
“The family was deprived of ever saying goodbye to her,” Schwencke said. And, he said, Mallan died an agonizing death.
“This lady died without any of her dignity,” he said. “She lived 91 years, and she cooked to death.”