Nursing Home Negligence
We represented the estate of an elderly man who was diagnosed with end-stage terminal bone cancer. Medical experts involved in the case testified that end-stage bone cancer is one of the most painful conditions, and patients in this condition are incapable of becoming addicted to pain medications. The pain was so bad for our client that his doctors had prescribed liquid morphine.
The nursing home and one of our client’s primary care nurses decided to withhold pain medication from our client to save money for the nursing home and to keep him from becoming addicted to the pain medication in his final days of life. The nurse gave him a placebo—essentially water—while letting our client believe that he was receiving the prescribed pain medication.
The defendants and their lawyers vigorously defended their actions, arguing against both liability and damages.
At the time of the $15 million verdict, this was the largest nursing home verdict in the state of North Carolina and was reported in newspapers across the county from the Wall Street Journal to the San Francisco Chronicle. After the verdict, the case was later settled for a confidential amount of money. The settlement for our client was fully collectible.