Choosing a nursing home for your elderly loved one can be a hard process and take a lot of time and consideration. No matter how much research and investigating you do on different facilities to determine if they’re right for your family member, they still might experience mistreatment and abuse at the care home that you choose.
When you find out your loved one is being abused by their nursing home staff, one of your first thoughts is probably wondering who is liable for what happened to them. Like any other personal injury case, this can be complicated. Let’s take a look at the different parties who might be able to be held liable for what happened to your loved one.
Possible Parties Liable for Nursing Home Abuse
Figuring out who was liable for your loved one’s abuse at their long-term care facility can be difficult because there are so many different parties who could be responsible for what happened. You’ll want to make sure that the right party is held accountable so that they must answer for what they’ve done, are held responsible, and then ideally cannot cause the same damage to another resident.
Here are some of the different parties that could be liable for the abuse that your loved one has suffered:
- The Nursing Home. Depending on the situation, the facility could be the entity who is responsible for the abuse and neglect of your family member. If policies aren’t safe for residents and a worker is following the policy, then the facility could be at fault because they have harmful policies. Even if their rules are safe, if a worker breaks the rules and the facility doesn’t do anything to correct the behavior, then they could ultimately be the party at fault for what happened.
- Nurses and Other Caregivers. Other times, the staff is who is at fault for the mistreatment of your loved one. Intentional abuse enacted by a nurse or other caregiver is just as bad as if it’s unintentional. Of course, they can neglect patients because they don’t have enough time to get to every patient, but they can also neglect patients because they’re being abusive. There are other ways they can be abusive, like being physically rough or verbally berating residents. When this happens, they are the person liable for the abuse.
- Other Staff. There are other workers at nursing homes that can sometimes abuse residents as well. Maintenance, food workers, and other staff members and contracted employees could be harmful to your loved one when they’re in their long-term care facility if they have access to their room or to be around them.
- Other Residents. Unfortunately, sometimes other residents can be the perpetrators who abuse your loved one. If they are physically, emotionally, financially, or sexually abusive to your family member, they need to be held accountable for what they’ve done.
- Visitors. Visitors at the facility can also be abusive to residents. They have access to the facility and might abuse the friend or family member who they came to visit, or they might find another resident to abuse while they’re on the grounds.
While an abuser could be any one of these parties, it could also be a combination of any of the people listed above. You can hold any party who was responsible liable for their actions, meaning that you might file a claim against multiple parties listed above.
Nobody likes to think about their loved one experiencing abuse from anyone, especially elderly family members in nursing homes. That’s why it’s important to hold the liable party accountable for what they do, because nobody should have to suffer from mistreatment. Hiring a nursing home abuse lawyer can help you get justice for your loved one so they can recover from what they’ve been through.
Elements of Liability
When you hire a lawyer to help you determine who was liable for the abuse, they will work on proving the negligent party’s liability through four elements. Here is how they will prove that a certain party was the one responsible for your loved one’s abuse:
- They owed your loved one a duty of care.
- They breached that duty of care through negligence.
- That breach directly caused your loved one to suffer injuries.
- Those injuries directly resulted in damages.
Once those elements can be proven, your nursing home abuse lawyer will help you build your claim and work toward getting your family member the justice that they deserve. Providing your attorney with all of the documentation you have about injuries and what happened so that they can quickly work toward proving negligence.
McMath Woods P.A. Is Dedicated to Our Clients
At McMath Woods P.A., we understand how vulnerable your loved one can feel after experiencing abuse or neglect from their nursing home or another entity associated with their facility. Our Little Rock nursing home abuse lawyer is here to guide you through the claims process so your family and loved one can get justice. Reach out to our office today so we can get started working for you.
