Many families depend on nursing homes to care for their elderly loved ones. When a nursing home facility is negligent in its care, vulnerable nursing home residents may be seriously injured or even die. Nursing home caretakers may fail to maintain proper hygiene and safety standards, otherwise, neglect their needs, or go as far as perpetrating abuse.
Personal injury attorneys at KMW Legal have handled many nursing home neglect and abuse cases in order to recover costs like medical bills, pain and suffering, and even funeral expenses. Families can trust the Boca Raton nursing home abuse lawyers for Keller, Melchiorre & Walsh to negotiate fair settlements after their elderly loved one has been injured after being neglected or abused at the hands of a trusted nursing home.
You may feel betrayed when the facility you trusted to care for your elderly loved ones lets you down. At KMW Legal, we believe nursing home negligence should not go unanswered, which is why we have dedicated ourselves to protecting victims’ right to seek damages in nursing home negligence lawsuits.
Over the past decade, KMW Legal has built a word-of-mouth reputation by providing outstanding service to injured nursing home abuse victims and their families. Our nursing home negligence attorneys are prepared to take on powerful insurance companies, even if that means escalating your nursing home negligence lawsuit to trial to obtain a fair settlement.
Hiring a capable nursing home negligence attorney in Boca Raton to negotiate your settlement is a worthwhile investment. Reach out to schedule a time to join us for a free strategy session with our Boca Raton team. We look forward to supporting you throughout the process of filing a nursing home negligence lawsuit to recuperate the damages you deserve.
We will not pressure you to accept a smaller settlement just to say we settled your case. Instead, we will continue to relentlessly pursue damages in court. Our founding partners’ prior trial experience makes KMW Legal uniquely well-suited to succeed.
Nursing home negligence cases can be complex and sensitive. You need a lawyer whose legal insight is matched by their compassion. KMW Legal has proven time and again that our ability to demonstrate liability and prove the value of our client’s damages has made us formidable opponents in negotiations.
With nearly 700 nursing home facilities in Florida, nursing home negligence and abuse are especially relevant concerns for many families. In civil court, nursing homes can be found liable for their neglectful or abusive treatment of residents under their care if their negligence has caused an injury and subsequent damages. A nursing home abuse attorney in Boca Raton could help a family seek compensation through a claim.
When a nursing home is negligent or abusive, they may attempt to conceal a resident’s injuries or distress from their families by refusing to let them visit, but according to Florida law, this constitutes a form of elder abuse. Knowing the indicators of nursing home abuse or neglect can be critical to ensuring that your elderly loved one receives the standard of care they are entitled to.
If you have noticed that your elderly loved one has unexplained bruises, cuts, or even broken bones, these may be signs that they are being abused or neglected by their caretakers. These injuries may stem from situations like fallingl after being wrongfully denied access to a walker or pushed against a hard surface. In some cases, nursing home staff will goad residents into hurting each other or ignore injuries inflicted by a violent resident.
The nursing home staff, or even your loved one, may try to cover up the injuries by wearing long sleeves or pants, pushing off visits without good reason, or creating a false explanation of events. Without prompt medical treatment, some injuries that would resolve themselves in a younger and healthier person may severely compromise the health of an elderly nursing home resident, which is why it’s important to keep an eye out for signs of physical abuse.
Unfortunately, nursing home residents are vulnerable to being sexually abused by nursing home staff and other residents. A resident who is experiencing sexual abuse may exhibit anxiety at being asked to shower or change clothes, develop frequent STDs, and have injuries to their pelvic area. Nursing home residents suffering from sexual abuse may also exhibit a drastic change in behavior.
Like other survivors of sexual abuse, abused nursing home residents can often show signs of lingering trauma. This may manifest as self-isolating behavior, an aversion to certain people, locations, and situations, or mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.
It is an unfortunate reality that a number of nursing home residents have experienced emotional abuse at the hands of their own caretakers. Caretakers may bully, manipulate, and intentionally provoke or distress nursing home residents, or allow other residents to do the same. Emotional abuse can lead an elderly person to withdraw from activities they previously enjoyed, exhibit signs of depression or anxiety, or lash out. They may also lose weight, have difficulty sleeping, and struggle to maintain good hygiene.
Elderly people are often targeted for financial fraud schemes and theft, but nursing home residents are particularly vulnerable because they are more isolated from their families. Common signs of financial abuse in the elderly are missing valuables, unusual credit card charges, large cash withdrawals, and a cagey demeanor about how they are spending their money. Many elderly victims of financial fraud or other forms of theft are embarrassed to admit that they were tricked and may try to conceal or deny the abuse.
Nursing home staff who neglect or abuse residents may be motivated by a variety of factors. In many cases, neglect stems from staffing shortages. Nursing home staff may be logistically unable to attend to the needs of every resident, be overtired and get sloppy when administering care, or take their frustrations about being understaffed out on the residents.
This can result in serious injury or death if a situation arises where a negligent nursing home fails to consistently administer medication, maintain their hygiene, or otherwise neglects their residents. An attorney in Boca Raton could help hold a negligent nursing home accountable for its harm.
Elderly people, particularly those that have dementia or other degenerative neurological conditions, are often vulnerable to being targets for abuse or neglect because they are dependent on someone else’s care and may be unable to articulate what is happening behind closed doors. That is why it is so important to thoroughly investigate a nursing home facility before you place your elderly loved one in their care and maintain regular contact with them.
If you have noticed signs of abuse or neglect in your loved one’s nursing home, you should report your suspicions to the Florida Department of Children and Families, law enforcement, and the nursing home facility. These entities will likely want to conduct their own investigations of the allegations, which provides an additional record of events for your nursing home negligence lawyer in Boca Raton to reference and leverage as evidence.
Elderly people who reside in nursing home facilities have the right to feel safe in the place they call home. When their needs are neglected, or someone takes advantage of their vulnerable situation, it can take a brutal toll on their physical and mental health.
This may look like an elderly resident developing PTSD from being sexually assaulted, being subject to painful and expensive treatments after follow-up care on a prior injury was neglected, or feeling humiliated by constant beratement and bullying from a staff member.
With the help of a Boca Raton attorney, injured nursing home residents and their families may be able to recover the costs of economic expenses, like medical bills pertaining to injuries sustained or exacerbated by a negligent nursing home, as well as non-economic expenses, like pain and suffering. A lawsuit could account for the following losses and more:
Nursing home negligence lawsuits are often complicated by the fact that abused or neglected residents may be incapable or reticent to speak up about their treatment. A nursing home negligence lawyer will be able to collect other sources of evidence, obtain expert witness testimony, analyze medical records, and provide strategic insight to form a compelling claim for damages in a nursing home negligence lawsuit.
By hiring an experienced nursing home negligence lawyer in Boca Raton, you have already increased the chances of obtaining a better settlement offer from the insurance company. When an insurance company sees that you have sought out a reputable nursing home negligence lawyer to represent you, especially one who is prepared to go to trial, they are more likely to take your case seriously in order to avoid the hassle of a trial or drawn-out negotiations.
A skilled attorney will be able to look at your loved one’s situation objectively and set realistic expectations for what you should anticipate recovering in damages. They will handle a variety of aspects of your case, such as inquiries from bill collectors and the insurance company, draft statements, and calculate damages while you focus on supporting your elderly loved one.
Boca Raton is home to 97, 422 residents. It is located along the coast of Palm Beach County, just south of West Palm Beach. Boca Raton is known for its beachside amenities, upscale shopping, and thriving business district.
The award-winning lawyers of Keller, Melchiorre & Walsh have invested our resources and expertise in the Boca Raton community in order to help victims of nursing home negligence and their families get the justice they deserve through fair settlements. As our client, you can feel confident that your concerns will be taken seriously and handled with care.
When a nursing home facility fails to provide adequate care or actively harms residents, they may be found liable in a nursing home negligence lawsuit if their actions resulted in a physical or emotional injury to the elderly person in their care. The Boca Raton nursing home abuse lawyers at Keller, Melchiorre & Walsh, we will not tolerate excuses when our clients and their families have endured financial, physical, and emotional hardships.
For the past decade, KMW Legal has faced powerful insurance companies head-on to champion the needs of our injured clients. If the insurance company proves unwilling to offer you what we believe your damages are worth, we will not be daunted by the prospect of taking your nursing home negligence lawsuit to court to fight for fair compensation.
If you suspect that your elderly loved one is being neglected or abused in a nursing home, you should reach out to our office today to schedule a free, no-obligation strategy session with our exceptional team. You will receive customized legal advice as we help you craft a plan of action to pursue damages against a negligent nursing home.
