Nursing homes are a combination of hospital-like settings, housing, and non-medical caregiving. These each require certain standards to be kept up to keep your senior family members healthy and thriving in the later years of their lives.
When nursing homes break the rules, put residents at risk, and actively abuse them, they can be held directly liable in a lawsuit. Our attorneys can help you file a lawsuit in court, naming the nursing home – not just the abusive workers – as defendants. However, we need to investigate and gather evidence to use in the claim first.
Call (312) 578-8502 for a free case evaluation with Rhatigan Law Offices’ Chicago nursing home abuse lawyers right away.
Who Can You Sue for Nursing Home Abuse?
When you are considering filing a claim for nursing home abuse, you have to investigate who to sue. Many nursing homes are run by broader organizations, while some are just that specific building and the caregivers at that location. In any case, we typically sue the company itself, not the individual worker who caused the abuse.
While your loved one may have been subjected to abuse by one individual, the company should be responsible. That abuse might violate company policy, but it was nonetheless done during the worker’s access to the patient/resident, which comes as part of their job. This is the hook that allows the lawsuit to go against the nursing home, not the worker alone.
Under a rule called respondeat superior, lawsuits for someone’s on-the-job negligence can go against their employer, not just the worker. However, nursing homes often try to dodge liability by saying the employee essentially went rogue when they committed abuse.
What Types of Abuse Can You Sue For?
Nursing home abuse often tends to fall into these categories, some of which might be surprising:
- Physical abuse – beating or otherwise injuring or striking residents
- Verbal abuse – harsh language used to demean residents
- Emotional abuse – harming the resident’s mood and emotional wellbeing, usually through demeaning language
- Sexual abuse – sexual assault and unwanted sexual touching committed against residents
- Financial abuse – stealing money from residents or manipulating them into giving someone access to their money.
You can sue for most of these so long as there is actual harm.
When it comes to physical and sexual abuse, the harm is present even if there are no lasting injuries; the unwanted touching is sufficient to constitute damages.
However, with verbal and emotional abuse, you must show some psychological or lasting harm, often through mental health and psychological evaluations, changes in mood, etc.
Financial abuse, though there is no physical harm in many cases, involves economic damages that still justify a lawsuit.
Filing a Lawsuit
You can – and should – report abuse in nursing homes to the State of Illinois, but this is separate from a lawsuit. Our lawyers can help you report the abuse to the proper parties, but we can also help you sue.
In a lawsuit, you seek not just to bring the abuse into the light, but to get compensation from the defendant for the harm your loved one faced.
To file, you submit the proper documents in court, serve the defendant with notice of the lawsuit, and progress the case through the courts. Our Naperville, IL nursing home abuse lawyers can take care of all of the research, draft the complaint, and work on the case from there.
Can the Family Sue for Nursing Home Abuse or Does it Have to Be the Nursing Home Resident?
This is where filing a lawsuit can be a bit tricky, because it has to come from the victim. In cases where a loved one passed away from abuse in a nursing home, the family and the estate can file a claim for their loss. However, when a loved one is still living with the effects of the abuse, they are the one to file the lawsuit with their lawyer’s help.
It is common for loved ones to bring the case to us and work with their loved one throughout the lawsuit. As long as we have permission from your loved one to loop you in on the facts of the case – and potentially if we have power of attorney documents naming you as the person to control your loved one’s finances and legal decisions – you can be heavily involved in the case.
Can I Pay for My Loved One’s Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer?
Typically, you can pay for a lawyer for someone else. The main issue would be that the person paying is not the client, and therefore has no right to hear about the case’s progress or talk to the attorney about how to deal with the case unless the client gives that permission.
Fortunately, with most injury and nursing home abuse cases, things are a bit more straightforward, as no one typically pays us up front for our services. Our claims are usually handled on a contingency fee basis, meaning that we only get paid from the winnings. This means we can devote our attention directly to the victim, and, with their permission, you can be involved, too. There should be no arguments about funding getting in the way of our advocacy.
What Evidence Should I Collect Before Going to a Lawyer?
If you suspect abuse, you do not need to build an airtight case before calling us and talking to us about your case. We can help collect a lot of the evidence you would need to file your claim. In some cases, you might only have suspicions of abuse, and you might not even have hard evidence to bring us in the first place. It is our later investigation that will truly reveal any abuse that might be taking place.
That being said, the more evidence you have before you come to us, the easier it is to give you a fair analysis of your case. If you have photos of bruises, recorded statements from your loved one about abuse taking place, and communications from the nursing home that show some kind of cover-up or negative response to your questions, save those for your lawyer.
From there, we can seek out records, staffing logs, and other internal reports that can help prove the case, as well as get medical assessments of your loved one and other evidence of the harm they faced.
Call Our Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers in Chicago Today
For a free case review, call Rhatigan Law Offices’ Aurora, IL nursing home abuse lawyers at (312) 578-8502.
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