Jury
awards $7 million against Nursing Home.
Mobile Register by William Rabb - Staff Reporter
Date: 19 December, 2001
Dolly Palmer of Mobile died at Bay Manor Health Care after falling out of bed repeatedly. In September, 1998, 89-year-old Dolly Palmer of Mobile died at Bay Manor Health Care, a nursing home off Cody Road. Workers there told her son, Gregory Palmer, that his mom had passed away after hitting her head in a fall, court records show.
A few days later, though, Palmer received a chilling phone call from the mortician: His mom had severe swelling from more than one blow to her head. Last week, three years after Dolly Palmer's death, a Mobile County Circuit Court jury ruled that the nursing home had withheld information that she had fallen repeatedly, and had done little to stop the falls. The jury awarded Palmer a $7 million verdict, the second-largest judgment against a nursing home in Alabama history, said plaintiff's attorney Jerry Taylor of Montgomery.
"She tried to tell me they weren't treating her right over there, and I didn't listen," Palmer said Monday. "Now I've got to live with that forever." The jury deliberated about two hours before returning the verdict against Beverly Healthcare Mobile, operator of the nursing home. Beverly Enterprises Inc. (NYSE: BEV) is the nation's largest nursing home chain, with 561 facilities in 30 states. "We're very surprised by the verdict and are taking immediate action to appeal," said Dan Springer, vice president for public relations at Beverly. "The fact is that the medical care and the testimony of the coroner flies in the face of the verdict that was handed down. This is another example of a jury trying to send a message without a clear foundation in the facts."
The nursing home industry is a frequent target of lawsuits, Springer said, because many people do not want to accept the view that injuries and deaths occur largely because of complications from aging, not from a lack of care. "There needs to be some common sense applied to jury verdicts," he said. The verdict included $2 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.
Beverly also is a defendant in a north Alabama lawsuit filed in April after a 70-year-old resident was raped. The suit charges that crews at the home allowed a 69-year-old man to walk out of the home with the woman. Beverly's stock price fell from $7.90 to $7.20 last week as the trial came to a close, and remained at about that level through Monday. Springer said the drop had nothing to do with the trial.
One of the saddest points about Dolly Palmer's death, her son said, was that she was only supposed to be in the nursing home for 100 days, for rehabilitation for radiation treatment for a brain tumor. The tumor left her unable to walk, but she was alert and improving, he said. Within days of checking into the home, she fell out of bed six times, nursing home records showed, according to Taylor, who is with the well-known Alabama law firm of Beasley, Allen. Taylor said the nursing home failed to take steps to prevent further accidents and that she repeatedly climbed out of bed, suffering a fatal injury when she fell from the bed on the sixth day after she became a patient.
"It was clear that they never tried any intervention, even though there were several options readily available," Taylor said. "Even if someone is terminal, their job is to provide good care and they didn't do that. They just gave up on her." "A simple bed alarm or a restraint would have saved my mother's life," said Greg Palmer, who urged families who have loved ones in nursing homes to frequently check their charts, which are available for the family's inspection.
His mother, a native of Coy, Ala., who moved to Mobile after marrying about 60 years ago, loved to work in the garden and keep the house, and was active in her church, Palmer said. If appeals courts uphold the award, Palmer plans to use it to build his family a nicer house, and dedicate it to his mom. "We're going to put a sign on it and call it Dolly's Place."
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