Mount Dora is home to many retired and elderly people, many of whom reside in a nursing home or a similar healthcare facility. These facilities owe a duty of care to protect their residents, and when their actions result in abuse that injures you or a loved one, it could allow for a civil lawsuit to obtain compensation. Our Mount Dora nursing home abuse lawyers use their experiences from prior cases to help clients hold facilities with abusive practices accountable for their misconduct. We explain what nursing abuse is below and detail other key aspects of seeking compensation for personal injury claims.
Residents of nursing homes have a broad range of rights established under Florida Statute Section 400.022. Violations of these rights may constitute nursing abuse and can take many forms, and result from either the misconduct of an individual caretaker or the broader systemic failures of a care facility. Some common examples of nursing abuse may include the following acts or omissions:
The injuries from this type of abuse can be far-reaching and range from emotional distress to physical ailments, and death in some cases.
Multiple parties could be liable for your or a loved one’s injuries from nursing abuse. This liability often starts with the direct caregivers responsible for you on a daily basis, but may extend to the company that owns or manages the facility. It is possible for liability to also fall to passive investors of a healthcare facility company. However, evidence must show they owed a duty of care to the resident and breached that duty through their actions or decision, causing injury, death or loss, as stated in Section 400.023(3).
Landowners of the real estate where the nursing facility is could also have premises liability depending on the events that caused your injury. Our Mount Dora nursing home neglect lawyers can investigate the events leading up to an injury, and evaluate the causes of abuse and who could have fault for them.
Like other injury claims, the victims of nursing home abuse could recover compensation for the harm they experienced. The available compensatory damages could include economic losses, such as incurred medical costs and non-economic damages for losses to your quality of life, including pain and suffering.
Section 400.0237 also allows punitive damages in nursing home abuse claims in cases of intentional abuse or gross negligence. These are damages that serve to not only compensate the injured resident but also to deter future misconduct from the nursing home. In cases of vicarious liability for an employee’s misconduct, punitive damages are only available if a manager or officer of the employer consented to the specific conduct that caused the injury. The cap on punitive damages is either three times your compensatory damages or $1 million, whichever is larger.
The legal process for a nursing home abuse claim in Mount Dora begins with a notice to the healthcare facility that has committed the wrongdoing. You must then wait 75 days before filing a lawsuit, in which time the nursing home should evaluate the claim and provide a rejection notice or settlement offer. This starts another 30-day waiting period for the parties and their representative to mediate and attempt to settle the claim. After this, you can generally proceed with a civil lawsuit in court.
A two-year statute of limitations applies to nursing home abuse claim under Section 400.0236. The filing deadline begins to run on the date of incident causing injury, or the date when the incident should have been discovered.
You or your loved one experienced something no one should ever go through, and you deserve justice. Our Mount Dora nursing home abuse lawyers help clients navigate these procedural requirements for their claim and could advise on the value of proposed settlements. This will allow you to make informed decisions about your possible rights to compensation.
Schedule a free consultation with The Umansky Law Firm today.
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