Skip to content

Nursing Home and Abandonment Cases on Vsam1040 Chicago LLC

Tien Thanh:

Hi, Jim and Taylor, how are you today?

Taylor Kosla:

Hi, Thanh. Good, thanks for having us on today.

James Parr:

It’s my first time, thanks for having me.

Tien Thanh:

First time, yeah, Jim. Well, thanks for joining the show today.

James Parr:

My pleasure.

Tien Thanh:

Could you introduce a bit about yourself, Jim, to our audience?

James Parr:

Well, my name’s James Parr, I usually go by Jim, which is short for James. I’ve been with the Mike Agruss Law since 2016. I recently became a partner this year, and I primarily focus my practice on personal injury, including car accidents, falls, things with nursing homes, and all those sort of things, and consumer law.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:01:41]. All right, so let’s dive in, I think the topic of today that I mentioned to audience, nursing home cases, the nursing home abuse that you guys work with in the past. So for the first case, what happened in the first case, and can you talk a little bit about it?

Taylor Kosla:

Yeah, of course. So the first case we’re going to talk about is a nursing home fall case. Our client was older, he was in his 80s. He was living at home with some help, someone came in, about a couple times a week just to help him with laundry and things like that. He was completely mobile, he didn’t have a walker, a wheelchair or anything like that. He needed gallbladder surgery, so he went into the hospital and had surgery, and when an older person has a surgery like that, they’re on medicine, they can … It messes with their cognition, so they often go to a nursing home after to kind of help facilitate the rehab.

So after the surgery, there weren’t any complications, he was admitted to a nursing home for temporary rehab, to make sure he had the strength that he required to return home, and while he had only been there about three days, but because of the medications he was on, the fact that he’d just come off surgery, he’s in an unknown place, he was noted to be at high risk for falls, which require certain measures to be in place, because they knew there was a strong likelihood that he could sustain a fall.

He got out of bed in the middle of the night, and attempted to go to the restroom, fell, and he fractured his hip, which then required additional surgery. But because the nursing home knew that he was at high risk for falls, that was in his records from the home, there were certain measures that they should’ve put in place to ensure that he didn’t fall, and they didn’t do that. So that fall, in our eyes, could’ve been prevented, and it really altered the course of the remaining years of his life.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:04:12].

Taylor Kosla:

… for a resident when they’re admitted. So because he was at high risk for falls, they should’ve had a guardrail in place on his bed that would’ve actually prevented him from getting out. They could’ve put a mat on the floor that would’ve softened his fall. A call light should’ve been in place, so he could’ve called for help, and the staff also should’ve been more attentive to his toileting needs. Those are all things that the nursing home could’ve done to prevent the fall and the severity of the injuries.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:06:28]. All right, so let’s go into, my followup question is, what is the client’s injuries? What was his treatments, what’s the medical bill like?

James Parr:

As Taylor touched on, the patient, I won’t say his name, it was an older gentleman, and he suffered a serious fracture to his hip, which needed to be surgically repaired. He never, even though it was operated on, he never quite recovered, he was never able to walk on his own ever again. For the rest of his life he was basically confined to a wheelchair to get around. And probably wouldn’t be surprising that an injury like that would have quite a bit of a medical bill tag to it. And I recall it was around $120,000 worth of medical bills. And since he was a Medicare recipient, fortunately that’s something that was covered by Medicare.

Taylor Kosla:

And then in addition to his medical bills, Jim said, he could never walk again. So prior to his initial gallbladder surgery, he had help coming in a couple times, just to help with groceries, laundry, but actually when he did eventually return home, he required someone to be with him during all waking hours of the day.

Tien Thanh:

Okay. [Vietnamese 00:07:57]. All right. So how long did it take for the case to settle?

James Parr:

It took approximately eight months from when the case was filed in court, until it was settled at a mediation. And a mediation is basically just another word for a settlement conference. It’s usually something non-binding, which means everybody can get together, they’re not going to be held to any settlement, necessarily, or anything that is said there is confidential, so it’s supposed to be just kind of an open, frank discussion about settlement. And the case did settle at mediation, and a few other things about mediation is that it’s something that, it’s a form of what they call alternative dispute resolution. In the court system, usually they, I won’t say push for it, but they advocate for the parties to at least explore settlement on their own, which sometimes takes the form of a settlement conference with the judge presiding over the case, maybe another judge, and sometimes mediation. And there’s other forms of it, but those are the main ones.

A little bit more about the mediation is that the parties are usually, they’re confident that they’re going to get a decent result there, because the mediators are typically retired judges or other, sometimes there’s other attorneys that litigated for many years and get into mediation. So that’s another plus with mediation, that you usually have somebody that you could trust in their judgment, and your client as well, and usually it leads to a settlement offer. Not always, but pretty often.

Taylor Kosla:

So in this case, the mediator was a retired judge, and this was actually my first mediation over Zoom for a personal injury case, because this happened right at the beginning of COVID. However, generally, myself, my client, the defense attorney, and usually an insurance adjuster, because that’s who’s paying to defend the nursing homes, all go to a facility where the mediation takes place, and the defendant and the plaintiff, they’re in separate rooms, and the mediator goes back and forth between the two parties.

So for Zoom, it was very similar, they actually put us in separate rooms in Zoom, the mediator goes back and forth talking about the strengths and weaknesses of the case, and kind of try and bring the parties together to facilitate a settlement, and fortunately in this case, we were successful.

Tien Thanh:

Okay. [Vietnamese 00:11:52]. So for our audience, our viewers watching this, what should someone do to make sure that their loved ones in place in a safe nursing home?

Taylor Kosla:

When you get to the point where you want to put someone in a home, it’s usually because you can’t give them the care that they need at home, or whether they’re in their own house. So you want to make sure the nursing home that you select will provide them that care that they need, and you can do that mostly by researching online.

The Illinois Department of Health is responsible for investigating, regulating nursing home facilities, and all their information about their investigations, their inspections, it’s available online, and they actually score nursing homes. Things that you want to look for when you’re actually touring a facility is how visible is the staff? How many staff members are there in relation to the residents? Take a really good look at what you’re seeing. Do the residents appear to be clean, and bathed, and is the facility itself clean, does it smell clean? Those are all signs that you want to look for to ensure that your loved one is going to get the care that they need. But I would rely heavily on research that you can find online.

Tien Thanh:

Sure. [Vietnamese 00:14:39]. All right, so let’s move on to the second case we have here, can you discuss about that case?

James Parr:

The next case we’re going to talk about, it’s a little bit different. All these cases have an element of sadness to them, this one’s a little bit, I would say, sadder. I won’t say our client, but a family contacted us, their son, brother was in a facility. He was a little bit younger of a gentleman, he had some mental health issues, and he hung himself, and he died by suicide, which was very sad. And we were happy to take the case on, because we thought there was definitely some violations there, and we wanted to do the most we could for the family. So that’s the overview of that case.

Tien Thanh:

[Vietnamese 00:17:01]. All right, so how long did it take for the case to settle?

Taylor Kosla:

So this case, it was filed, but before we could have it filed, we needed a family member appointed to actually bring the lawsuit on behalf of the deceased. So once we were able to do that, we filed suit, and this was actually pretty unusual, but the facility wanted to settle right away and reached out to us, and I think that’s just really telling of how terrible what happened is. I think they knew that the facility was really negligent, this shouldn’t have happened. So the case did settle shortly after filing, and our clients were motivated to settle, because this was a horrific event, and they actually were informed about the death over a social media message, which was really sad. So just, on top of a horrific event, it happened, they didn’t hear about it until days later, and then the manner in which they heard about it … The family really wanted to put it behind them, and that motivated them to settle, which we were able to do.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:18:58]. All right, so my followup question is what sort of investigation was done by the IDPH nursing home in this case?

James Parr:

First of all, it appears very surprising that appeared that they didn’t do any investigation at all, or very little. It’s almost as if they just didn’t want to deal with it. As far as the nursing home itself, once we got to the bottom, we found out that there was maybe, everybody just wanted to just … They assumed it was a tragedy, and they just wanted to move past it, which that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it.

But fortunately, the IDPH did get involved, and they did a thorough investigation, and there was just a litany of failings at the facility. Some were more of a technical nature, but there were some very glaring ones as far as, the gentleman that hanged himself was missing, there was residents that said, “Hey, we don’t see so-and-so around,” and some of the staff just walked around from room to room, and if a light was off, they just assumed that the residents were in that room and in bed, which that’s not, it’s nowhere near would satisfy what they should’ve been doing. And once they kind of thought that maybe he did, he was missing, they went, “Well, maybe he just took off.” And there’s just a lot of glaring errors, and some of the basic things were, it was a holiday weekend. They didn’t even call in that this gentleman was missing, or there was any incident. Even after they had found that he was dead, they neglected to timely report it. It looks like they didn’t even do some of the very basic things, like creating a written report. So it was just a tragedy and a travesty all around as far as what happened. So this is one of the more egregious cases that I’ve worked on.

Taylor Kosla:

And I think in general it’s not unusual for residents to pass away in nursing homes, that’s usually kind of end of life type of care, but this manner of death I think certainly prompted an investigation, and a thorough investigation at that.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:23:08]. All right. So we talk about this case, the person committed suicide. Atypical case. So why was his medical history important, in this case?

Taylor Kosla:

So like every resident who’s admitted to a home, their medical history’s really important. That plays a big role into the care plan that’s created for them, and that is exactly what it sounds like. It is a plan for how to care for someone to meet their needs. So this resident had been in other facilities, he had a history of mental health problems, he had a history of suicide attempts. So they knew that there was a possibility of this happening, and they did not take the measures that they should’ve to prevent it from happening, like Jim said. There were a lot of failures, like not monitoring and supervising him like they should’ve, keeping an eye on him. All those things should’ve been done to prevent this terrible travesty.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:25:43]. All right, so let’s move on to the third case that we have here. What happened in the third case, you want to discuss?

Taylor Kosla:

Yeah, so this third case is actually a combination of a few different instances. It started with an older woman who just needed help inside her home, so they had home healthcare people coming in. I think it had started about 11 weeks or three months prior to the first incident, which was a fall. So she was in a wheelchair, and over the three months that she had this home healthcare service coming to her, she had various different people coming, so it’s not like she had the same person who knew her, knew her needs, that was coming every single week. And on the day of the incident, that was the fall, there was actually someone who had never treated or helped her at all. So this new caretaker comes to the house, and our client needs to be transferred, I believe it was a transfer either from the wheelchair to the bed, or vice versa.

And during the transfer, it’s unclear what happened, however, our client ended up with a fractured hip. And as we learned out over time with the case, that caretaker never was provided her care plan, didn’t know what sort of needs that she had, her medical history, and she actually testified that she did not know what happened. She doesn’t know how the patient actually fractured her hip, but she was obviously bound to a wheelchair, so she must’ve done something wrong. Maybe she knew what she did wrong, and just didn’t want to admit it, but her testimony was that she didn’t know what happened. However, someone with a wheelchair doesn’t just end up with a fractured hip unless something happens.

Tien Thanh:

Right. [Vietnamese 00:29:00].

Taylor Kosla:

My name is Taylor Kosla. I’m a partner at Mike Agruss Law. I started in August 2017, and after three years of practicing, I was named partner in February 2021. Personal injury clients come to our office in a time of need, and sometimes desperation. Something devastating happened to them. We can provide clients with peace of mind by ensuring them that we are here to help. We are in this together, and we will take care of them. We are a fast-acting law firm. We are responsive to our clients, and maintain open lines of communication. Our sense of urgency is part of what makes us different from other law firms. We put people first, and we make sure we get our clients the compensation they deserve.

Our consumer rights practice is a national practice, so we can help people from the east coast to the west coast. There are laws in place to protect consumers, and not everyone knows these rights exist, and certainly not everyone knows, or even believes, that our clients never pay us a penny. Several consumer rights statutes contain a fee shift provision, which means that if we prevail, the defendant must pay our attorneys’ fees and costs. Our consumer clients appreciate the work that we do, and that makes my job rewarding.

What I like most about plaintiff’s work is getting to know our clients, understanding the facts of what happened, and how the occurrence affected our client. As an attorney, we are given a set of facts, and it is our job to create a timeline and story of events. We must put ourselves in the shoes of our client, whether that be at the scene of the accident, or months after at home, learning how to adapt to a disability. Having had a family member sustain a life-altering injury, I can relate with my clients and their family members, and this fuels my passion for what we do: putting people first.

My favorite animal is a dog. The app I use most is Apple News. It’s hard to say what my favorite food is, because it depends on what I have a taste for. But generally, I like steak and seafood. I love to travel, and Florida is one of my favorite places to escape to, because you can go to the beach, play golf, and eat at great restaurants. I like my weekends like I like my weekdays, which is busy. I like being outside, whether that’s going for a run along the lake, golfing, or skiing. I spend time with family members and friends. I love having people over to cook for and to try new recipes with.

Since I was born, I knew I would be a lawyer or doctor. I learned early on that I did not care for science, which made it easy for me to pursue a career in the law. My job is perfect for someone with a passion for the law and medicine, because these two areas coincide with personal injury and medical malpractice cases.

I enjoy reading John Grisham books, and have acquired quite a collection over the years. I am always up for watching a new movie, but generally, I enjoy the classics, like Goodfellas and Father of the Bride. At Mike Agruss Law, we are a hardworking team of people who are determined to maximize results for our clients. Each member of our firm plays an important role in the success of our practice. Our focus is to ensure that we are available to communicate with our clients, and to ensure they have the representation they need. We are dedicated to putting the needs of our client first, above all.

Video:

[Vietnamese 00:34:25].

[Vietnamese 00:35:36].

Mike Agruss:

My name is Mike Agruss. I’m the founding attorney of Mike Agruss Law. Mike Agruss Law started in March of 2012. What I like about personal injury cases is each case is different, so it makes it challenging. It’s something new, it’s something exciting, because you are investigating a whole new set of facts in each case that you work on.

What I like most about consumer rights cases is most people don’t know about the law. We didn’t learn about it much in law school, and if we’re not learning about it in law school, most people don’t know what their rights are. I enjoy explaining the law to people. It’s always refreshing to hear a client say, “I didn’t know I had those rights.” And most importantly, consumer rights cases that we handle, which are primarily financial issues, have what’s called a fee shift provision. So my fees are shifted to the other side. In other words, my clients don’t pay my fees and costs, the company we’re going after does. So it’s refreshing to explain someone their rights, you have options, and not only can we fix their problem, the other side has to pay our fees and costs. And the consumer rights practice is national, so I like the idea of being able to help everyone in the country.

What I like most about plaintiff’s work is representing individuals. I tell people all the time, “You’re either a plaintiff’s lawyer, or you’re not.” From the moment I could walk, I knew I wanted to go to law school, and I always knew I wanted to go plaintiff’s work. There was a period of time for about a year and a half where I did insurance defense work, and it was enlightening, and I learned a lot, and it makes me a better lawyer on the plaintiff’s side, because I know how the other side is thinking. But I am 100% a plaintiff’s lawyer. I like having individual clients, I like having someone to talk to. It’s refreshing to get that review from a client, it’s refreshing to be told you did a good job, and it makes me think that this was, the reason I went to law school was to help out individuals.

My favorite animal is a dog. We have one at home, but I’m a big animal lover. My son is six years old, and I just got him a fish tank for his birthday, and it’s probably as much of a gift for him as it is for me. So I like all sorts of animals, but I’d say my favorite animal is a dog.

The app I use the most is Waze. I feel like I’m thinking, answering questions, analyzing things all day long, going through a million emails, phone calls, and the last thing I want to do when I get in my car is figure out where I’m going. I love being able to plug in an address, and Waze tells me where to go. My favorite food is pizza and sushi. I’m a big lover of deep dish pizza, so the original Uno’s and Due’s in Chicago I’ve been going to since I was in high school. I’m also a big seafood fan, I love sushi. When I lived out in California for a couple of years, they had incredible sushi out there. I love it, I miss it.

My perfect vacation has always been relaxing on a beach. I’ve got two toddlers at home, and so that’s even more important these days, so 100% relaxing on a beach. Weekends are for catching up on sleep, hanging out with my family, exercising, and most importantly, getting afternoon naps. I love napping, and on the weekends, I certainly nap every day.

If I was not a lawyer, I actually, I don’t know what I would be. I knew I wanted to be a lawyer since I could walk. Having started my own firm, I also like the aspect of running a small business, so I would be a small business …

Tien Thanh:

[Vietnamese 00:40:04]. All right, so we talk about what happened with the third case, the patient, she got the bone fracture, hip fracture, probably moving from the wheelchair to the bed.

Taylor Kosla:

Right.

Tien Thanh:

With the help of the assistant. So in that case, what was the treatment, what the injuries, can you give some details, the bills, medical bills, and so on?

James Parr:

Sure. Just jumping back to the first case, if you recall, it was a similar injury, but much different circumstances. So shows that there’s going to be similarities of cases, and things that, just one thing’ll make it quite different. So in this case, just like the first one, it was a hip fracture, took surgical repair, it took time for rehabilitation, and I know that this patient or client, client’s mother was never able to walk on her own again. And she also had, the total of her medical bills were also very similar, they were upwards of like nearly $130,000. So they were significant injuries, and fortunately I recall for this patient that she had a great job and she had great benefits, and those medical bills were all taken care of. So that was also good news for the family.

Taylor Kosla:

And we’ve already talked about two cases with hip fractures, and those are not uncommon for nursing home residents and older people. They tend to have more fragile bodies, and that also plays in a role into their recovery. The older someone is, they just don’t bounce back from injuries like they would have when they’re younger.

Tien Thanh:

Right. [Vietnamese 00:42:07]. All right. So [inaudible 00:43:21] for another incident at the facility for physical therapy, rehab?

Taylor Kosla:

Right, so like I was saying, older folks, they just don’t bounce back from injuries. So after she had surgery to repair her fractured hip, she was then admitted to a nursing home for rehab. And while she was there, she developed pressure sores. And we discussed on our other nursing home show what a pressure sore is, and skin and tissue damage, usually to bony areas on the body, elbows, sacrum, your heels. So unfortunately, while she was trying to recover from a fractured hip, she then developed pressure sores, and that likely could’ve been from the facility not turning and repositioning her enough, not providing her with an air loss mattress. As an older person in her condition, it’s unlikely that she was able to move independently much at all coming off that hip surgery, so her care plan should have taken or called for appropriate measures to prevent pressure sores. Pressure sores are another really common case for nursing home abuse and neglect, because older people, when they do have injuries or maybe just certain medical conditions where they’re not independent, they’re not up and moving, it’s really important that there are measures taken to move them, whether it’s with the nurses, with the special mattress, with those additional protectors. For wheelchairs, there’s cushions for the wheelchairs.

So that actually ended up being another case, so this case went from just being against the initial at-home healthcare provider to, we filed suit against this nursing home facility for the pressure sores. And really, that’s telling of just how the trajectory of her life changed significantly from that initial fall, and eventually contributed to the end of her life.

Tien Thanh:

[Vietnamese 00:45:38]. All right, so how long did it take for the case to settle?

James Parr:

As Taylor mentioned, there were actually two defendants in the case, and the way it usually goes in a court case, something like this would be combined. So it’s kind of two cases in one, but it’s some things go along together, some things go separate ways, but-

Taylor Kosla:

It’s kind of related, because with the initial fall, she wouldn’t have been in the other nursing home if the initial fall didn’t occur.

Tien Thanh:

Right.

James Parr:

Correct. And since it took place within a relatively short amount of time, it made sense to file the cases together. So, about 10 months into the lawsuit, the defendant, actually the second defendant, the one where our client’s mother, the patient, developed the bedsores, they’re interested in settling the case, and we engaged in informal settlement negotiations. I mentioned that, because we didn’t need to get a mediator involved, we just kind of went back and forth with the attorneys, get back to our clients, get back to the lawyers, and just a little bit of back and forth. So that was within 10 months, we did a little bit of what we call discovery in the case, we just got to the written part of discovery, we didn’t have to do depositions. So that aspect of the case, that part of it was wrapped up in about 10 months, and this case, for the other or I’ll say main defendant, because at least in our eyes they’re more culpable with starting the events that led to the patient’s decline in health with the broken hip.

So that eventually, we did do a couple of depositions, and then we agreed on mediation. Mediation’s not forced on anyone, but if the parties are interested in at least exploring discovery, that’s one of the things that the parties can agree to. And this is another mediation that it turned out well. We had a very knowledgeable and experienced mediator, was also a retired judge from the area here in Cook County, so both sides could feel good about what he had to say, and we were able to reach an agreement. So from having the case filed until wrapping everything up, about 14 months.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:49:07]. So what can our viewers learn from this case?

Taylor Kosla:

What they can take away from this case is you always want to look for signs of abuse or neglect in nursing home, and actually put together a list of signs to look for. But like we discussed, really common nursing home cases are falls, pressure sores. I don’t think the suicide was a common one, but again, it’s a huge red flag that something isn’t right here. Broken bones, bruises, any sort of injury, head injury, medication overdose. Does the resident seem different, are they not speaking as clearly as they were prior to being admitted? There might be something wrong going on with their medication.

Dehydration or malnutrition is really common in nursing homes. Poor hygiene, are they being showered regularly, do they look clean? Soiled bedding, that’s a lack of toileting, residents should be regularly toileted if they can’t toilet themselves. Rapid weight loss. That could be a sign of a few things, whether it’s improper medication, doses, malnutrition. Are they not having their dietary needs met? Sudden agitation or emotional withdrawal, frequent crying, or complaints of poor treatment. Those are all signs that maybe some investigation should go into the care at the facility, and a great way to do that is through the Illinois Department of Public Health. It is their job to investigate these concerns, to hold these nursing homes accountable for the care and treatment that they provide to their residents.

Tien Thanh:

All right. [Vietnamese 00:52:50]. All right, so thanks for talking through three cases, nursing abuse today with me and our viewers. So lastly, what advice do you have for the viewer regarding nursing home cases?

Taylor Kosla:

Do you want to go first?

James Parr:

Well, I would just like to add that I certainly agree with everything that Taylor listed as far as the red flags and warning sides. Of course, there’s the resources of calling the IDPH, and of course there’s attorneys that are always looking to help. And I think Taylor can add a few more comments to that.

Taylor Kosla:

Right, so in addition to looking at the, look for signs of abuse and neglect, if your loved one’s in a home, if you can visit as frequently often to observe what’s going on in the home, that’s really beneficial. If you can’t physically be there, call. Don’t be afraid to ask question. The more involved you are with the care, the more knowledge that you’ll have about whether your loved one is getting the treatment that they need. And if not, again, ask questions, call the IDPH. There’s other options.

Tien Thanh:

Right. Well, thanks for your advice. [Vietnamese 00:55:49]. All right, thanks all for joining our show today.

James Parr:

Thank you for having me.

Tien Thanh:

Right, thank you.

Submitted Comments

No Comments submitted yet. Sharing your story will help others!