Nursing home abuse lawsuits in Nevada are civil actions you can bring against your elder care facility for causing you physical or emotional harm. Common legal grounds include
- negligence,
- battery,
- false imprisonment,
- breach of contract, and
- intentional infliction of emotional distress.
These claims often stem from poor personal care, lack of maintenance, neglect, and cruel or unprofessional staff.
In this article, our Nevada personal injury attorneys discuss:
- 1. Definition
- 2. Filing a Lawsuit
- 3. Damages
- 4. Statute of limitations
- 5. Defenses
- 6. COVID-19 deaths
- 7. Report nursing home abuse
- 8. Options besides suing
- 9. Self-reporting by the facility
- Additional Reading
1. Definition
Nursing home abuse occurs when you – an elder care facility resident – suffer either:
- Physical abuse, such as beatings, kicking, slapping, corporal punishment, being retrained unnecessarily, and other mistreatment;
- Emotional abuse, such as verbal threats and any uncalled for insults or humiliation;
- Neglect, such as inadequate access to food, water, medical care, clothing, shelter, and a safe, clean environment; neglect also includes ignoring your valid concerns and complaints.
- Sexual abuse, such as drugging and raping and any other non-consensual sexual activity;
- Isolation and abandonment, such as being cut off from all socialization for substantial periods of time; and/or
- Exploitation, such as a staff member misusing your finances or Medicare funds, forging your name, changing your will/estate plan, or cutting off access to your money; this is also called “financial abuse” or “financial exploitation.”
According to the National Council on Aging (NCOA), each year 5 million older Americans suffer some kind of elder abuse, often in nursing facilities. The majority of the victims are women.1
Causes
A variety of factors may contribute to your abuse or neglect. These factors include, but are not limited to:
- Poor staffing decisions by the nursing home managers, resulting in unqualified staff or staff who have criminal and/or violent backgrounds (“negligent hiring and supervision”);
- Poorly trained caregivers without the skills to deliver proper care (“negligent personal care”);
- Too few nursing home staff members (understaffing);
- Too few visits from – or professional negligence by – health care providers;
- Isolation;
- Residents who are reluctant or fearful to report any wrongdoing;
- Negligent maintenance of the facility and grounds; and/or
- Negligent selection or upkeep of equipment.
Warning signs
Common signs of nursing home abuse and neglect are when you develop bedsores (skin ulcers). Had the nursing home employees re-positioned you frequently enough, then no pressure sores should have formed.
Another common sign of elder abuse and nursing home neglect is malnutrition and weight loss. Had the staff fed you enough and kept tabs on what you were eating, then you should not be malnourished.
One of the most common warning signs of neglect in a long-term care facility is when you fall, which may result in broken bones and other serious injuries. Had the staff supervised you enough, you should not have had the opportunity to walk unaided.
Other indicators of nursing home abuse include:
- Depression and anxiety
- Avoidance or withdrawal from social situations
- Being given the wrong medications or the wrong dosages
- Changes in behavior and moodiness
- New bruises or other injuries
- Bad hygiene
- Personal property that has gone missing
- Unusual activity in your bank and credit card accounts
Common causes of action in nursing home abuse lawsuits include negligence, battery, breach of contract, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
2. Filing a Lawsuit
The most common defendant in nursing home abuse cases is the nursing home itself. You may also be able to sue the individual staff members who inflicted the abuse. However, the nursing home itself likely has much deeper pockets than any of its employees.
Depending on the particular injuries, other potential defendants include:
- Any doctors or nurses who serve the eldercare home, if they caused your injuries (you may also be able to bring a medical malpractice legal action);
- The company that cooks the food, if the food caused you to become ill; and/or
- The company that cleans the facility, if it used toxic products that injured you
3. Damages
Depending on the claims, you can seek compensatory damages for:
- Your medical expenses;
- Psychological counseling for you and your family members;
- Pain and suffering of you and your family; and
- Any other out-of-pocket monetary damages
Should the case go to trial, you can ask the court for punitive damages if the defendant acted in a malicious or particularly egregious way. Punitive damages can be far greater than compensatory damages.2
4. Statute of limitations
In most Nevada cases involving nursing home negligence, there is a two-year time limit to sue. The clock typically begins running after your injury occurs or after your injury is discovered.3 Though there are situations where the statute of limitations may toll (pause), such as if a nursing home staff member purposely hid your injury from your family.4
In any case, consult an attorney as soon as possible. Bringing a civil cause of action and gathering evidence take time.
5. Defenses
When facing lawsuits for elder abuse or neglect, nursing homes may try to make the following arguments as a defense:
- You or your family fabricated the allegations;
- The nursing home staff was acting in self-defense after you attacked the staff first;
- The nursing home provided adequate care according to industry standards;
- Your injuries stemmed from preexisting conditions and age, not from the nursing home’s actions
Assisted living facility abuse causes not only physical injuries to nursing home patients but also mental and emotional ones as well.
Typical evidence in these cases includes:
- eyewitness accounts;
- medical records showing physical harm;
- photographs and video;
- expert testimony
6. COVID-19 deaths
Families whose loved ones died or sustained injuries from the coronavirus pandemic in a nursing home facility may have a wrongful death claim against the nursing home for failing to implement the necessary preventative measures.5 Arguably, nursing facilities are liable for not protecting their residents from COVID-19 by failing to:
- Outfit their staff with PPE (personal protective equipment);
- Practice necessary hygiene, such as frequent hand washing and sanitizing of residents’ rooms and communal areas;
- Social-distance the residents;
- Restrict visitors who were not tested for COVID-19;
- Bring sick patients to the ER in time;
- Administer available vaccines early enough6
7. Reporting nursing home abuse
If you suspect elder abuse, neglect, abandonment, exploitation, isolation or have other nursing home facility complaints, contact Adult Protective Services (APS) of Nevada’s Aging and Disability Services (ADSD). You can either fill out a report online or phone the Elder Rights Intake Unit at:
- Clark County, including Las Vegas: (702) 486-6930
- Anywhere else in Nevada: (888) 729-0571
(If there is an immediate danger, then call 911.)
Note that APS used to be called EPS, for Elder Protective Services.
8. Options besides suing
In addition to reporting the abuse to Nevada’s Department of Health and Human Services (discussed in the previous section), you may file a police report. The police will then investigate the matter and may bring elder abuse charges against the liable parties.
Nevada’s elder abuse statute (NRS 200.5099) makes it a crime to abuse, neglect, isolate, abandon, or exploit you if you are at least 60 years old.
If there is no substantial bodily or mental harm, elder abuse or neglect can be prosecuted as a either a:
- gross misdemeanor, carrying up to 364 days in jail and/or up to $2,000 in fines; or
- class C felony, carrying up to 5 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.
If there is serious injury, elder abuse or neglect is a category B felony carrying two to 20 years in prison.7
9. Self-reporting by the facility
Nevada nursing homes are required to self-report to Nevada’s Bureau of Health Care Quality and Compliance any allegations of:
- elder abuse,
- elder neglect,
- elder mistreatment,
- injuries of unknown sources (not including falls without injuries), and
- misappropriation of resident property.
The facility must also investigate the allegations and self-report the results to the Bureau within five working days of the allegation.8
Additional Reading
For more in-depth information, refer to these scholarly articles:
- Protecting the Rights of Nursing Home Residents: How Tort Liability Interacts with Statutory Protections – Nova Law Review.
- Nursing Home Statutes: Mistreatment Definitions – Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect.
- Dealing with Nursing Home Neglect: The Need for Private Litigation – South Texas Law Review.
- The Nursing Home Dilemma in America Today: The Suffering Must be Recognized and Eradicated – Santa Clara Law Review.
- The Criminal Justice Response to Elder Abuse in Nursing Homes: A Routine Activities Perspective – Western Criminology Review.
Legal References
- Nursing Home Abuse Statistics, Nursing Home Abuse Center. See, for example, Estate of Curtis v. S. Las Vegas Med. Inv’rs, LLC, (2020) 466 P.3d 1263, 136 Nev. Adv. Rep. 39; see also NRS 41A.015.
- See NRS 42.005; NRS 42.007.
- NRS 11.190.
- NRS 41A.097.
- NRS 41.100.
- See, for example, Darcy Spears, Nursing home nightmare leads to lawsuit against Life Care Center in Las Vegas, KTNV-13 ABC (August 27, 2020); see, for example, Michael Scott Davidson, More than 80% of Nevada’s nursing homes failed to meet infection standards, Las Vegas Review-Journal (March 13, 2020).
- NRS 200.5099. (A successive elder abuse conviction is a category B felony carrying two to six years in prison, even if there are no serious injuries). See, for example, Vallery v. State, (2002) 118 Nev. 357, 46 P.3d 66.
- 42 CFR 483.13(c)(2)-(4); Nevada Administrative Code 449.74491.