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Nursing homes that are negligently operated pose a serious risk to their residents, who rely on the care and services that they provide. When the actions or inactions of a nursing home cause a resident injury, the resident can file a lawsuit against the nursing home for damages.
When considering a lawsuit, you will have to determine whether the nursing home was negligent in causing the injuries. If you can prove your case, you can recover damages for a wide range of harms, which your lawyer can help you calculate. But don’t wait too long to reach out, as you only have a two-year time limit to file your claim in court, and by then it is likely much of the evidence will be lost.
When you call Wruck Paupore’s Fort Wayne nursing home attorneys today, you will receive a free initial case assessment and be on the path to justice. To find out more, you can reach us by calling (219) 322-1166.
Sometimes, nursing home intake agreements contain mandatory arbitration clauses, which require you to resolve cases through private resolution. In our view, these agreements should not be enforceable, as they are seldom discussed with families when they admit a loved one to a nursing home. Nonetheless, mandatory arbitration requirements are often an issue in pursuing recovery from a nursing home and it is important for an experienced lawyer to review your agreement with the facility as a first step before a lawsuit is filed.
Assuming there are no issues in this area, it is possible to proceed in court. In these cases, Illinois nursing home residents have the right to file a lawsuit against the nursing home operator if their negligence led to the resident suffering injury or illness. Nursing home negligence comes in many different forms.
In order to prove that the nursing home was negligent, a plaintiff must show that the nursing home violated the duty of care they owed to the resident. Below are several examples of nursing home negligence that could result in harm to a resident.
Nursing homes provide vital services to their residents. They arrange for food services, hygienic care, safe shelter, medical assistance, and around-the-clock availability to assist residents with their needs. When these facilities fail to provide these or any of the other services they are tasked with offering, they may be considered neglectful by a court. The requirements that nursing homes and assisted living facilities must meet are laid out fully under the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act, legislation intended to protect our most vulnerable population from shortcomings in professional care.
Nursing home residents are particularly susceptible to complications resulting from falls. That is why reasonably prudent nursing homes provide facilities with high levels of accessibility. This requires inspection for hazards, installation of guide rails, and effective lighting. If you or a loved one fell and suffered a serious injury on nursing home grounds, you should consult with an Illinois nursing home injury attorney about whether the nursing home could and should have done more to prevent the accident. Our Milwaukee slip and fall accident lawyer can help you to prepare the case.
Nursing home residents can recover compensation for the consequences of abuse, which may come in many forms. Physical abuse is not the only type of abuse that can be compensated. Emotional abuse and harassment, sexual abuse, and financial abuse are all grounds for a lawsuit. If an individual employee is responsible for the abuse, the resident may not always be able to sue directly. However, if the nursing home should have been aware of the abuse or failed to use proper hiring practices, they could be liable for the abuse victim’s harm.
While you are not required to use an attorney to file your nursing home lawsuit in Illinois, having a capable and experienced Illinois nursing home injury lawyer on your side can make a significant difference in your recovery.
Many potential injury plaintiffs, especially those in nursing homes, are unable to handle a civil lawsuit all on their own, especially while dealing with the ramifications of the defendant’s negligence. This can lead to mistakes in filings, delays in the recovery process, and failure to hold the nursing home accountable.
These cases are extraordinarily complicated, often involving issues of unique medical standards of care, as well as federal and state regulatory requirements which are applicable in many cases. We would never recommend attempting to handle these cases on your own or with an inexperienced lawyer. Less experienced law firms regularly contact us to assist them with their nursing home cases because we have many decades of experience working in this field.
Experienced lawyers will work to identify areas of harm that you might not even realize could be grounds for compensation. For instance, you may know that you could get compensation for medical care expenses for your injuries through a lawsuit. However, you may not be aware that you can also get additional compensation for the pain and suffering you have and will experience as a result of the defendant’s negligence. This includes using skilled life care planners to identify and account for the future care needs (and related costs) that require professional evaluation and can substantially increase the value of your case.
If the nursing home’s behavior shows a particularly reckless or intentional disregard for the health of their residents, you could recover punitive damages through a lawsuit, which are meant to punish the defendant for their reprehensible conduct.
It is extremely difficult for victims of nursing home abuse to assess their own damages and pursue their case without the assistance of legal counsel. We urge you to take advantage of our free case evaluation process from Wruck Paupore’s seasoned Milwaukee nursing home injury lawyers.
If a nursing home resident is not able to bring a case on their behalf, that should not prevent them from seeking justice. Under Illinois law, the legal guardian of the nursing home resident may file the lawsuit on the resident’s behalf. Talk to one of our Indianapolis nursing home injury attorneys about the process of being named a legal guardian for a loved one who was injured at their nursing home.
To file your lawsuit against a nursing home in Illinois, you must act according to the state’s statute of limitations. Under the statute of limitations, Illinois nursing home injury victims (or their representatives) have two years to file their lawsuit in court. This two-year period starts when you discovered (or reasonably should have discovered) the injury.
However, if the facility is operated by a government entity, time requirements for providing notice to them will be much shorter. Moreover, the statute of limitations is the absolute last moment a lawsuit can be filed, and it does not account for the time necessary to investigate and prepare your case. Often, the most important evidence of abuse can begin to disappear within days of the abuse. For this reason, you should act as soon as abuse or neglect is discovered.
If for some reason the case was not filed within the two-year statute of limitations, there are some very limited exceptions that may extend the time period. This includes some instances where the injury leaves the victim mentally incapacitated. However, exceptions are very narrow, so we urge you to avoid relying on them to delay filing your claim. Instead, we recommend that you take your first step toward filing your suit today by calling your Indiana nursing home injury attorney. If more than two years have passed, we can evaluate whether there are any viable exceptions that may allow us to still seek recovery on your behalf.
To get the benefit of an initial case assessment for free, call Wruck Paupore’s Hammond, IN nursing home injury lawyers today at (219) 322-1166.
Don is a founding partner and one of the nation’s top-ranked personal injury litigators. He is a member of the Multi-million Dollar Advocates Forum, which includes less than 1% of the nation’s trial lawyers, and awarded the highest ranking given by Martindale Hubbel and AVVO.
More importantly, Don understands representing personal injury victims is about more than recovering the best settlement: it’s about helping clients get back on their feet and supporting them in every aspect of their recovery.
In nearly all cases, our clients seek compensation from the wrongdoer’s insurance company. Before forming Wruck Paupore, Jason worked for a prominent law firm representing some of the world’s largest insurers. This experience gives Jason a deep understanding of the insurance industry and the strategies it uses to pay injury victims as little as possible.
Jason -- and our entire team -- put this inside knowledge to work to force insurance companies to pay what is actually owed. Often, we use the insurance company’s own tactics against them as we fight for the full compensation our client deserves.
For more than four decades, Keith has been fighting for injury victims. During that time, he’s watched the insurance industry change, with insurers now more interested in protecting their stock price than treating injury victims fairly.
Since the beginning, Keith has put people first. From his childhood in Gary, Indiana during the 1960’s and working his way through law school, Keith has risen to become one of the Midwest’s most respected trial lawyers. He has never forgotten that being a lawyer is about helping people -- and seeing injury victims through struggles in a way that could change their lives forever.
Over the decades, Keith, Don and Jason have fought relentlessly for clients, even when other lawyers have said the case was impossible to win.
Contact Us:
Wruck Paupore P.C.
Injury Lawyers
275 Joliet St. Suite #250
Dyer, IN 46311
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