Abuse Or Neglect Of Nursing Home Resident: Court Extends Statute Of Limitations
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
July 1996 Quick Summary: Abuse or neglect of a nursing home resident is a breach of contract for which the family may file suit. The statute of limitations for breach of contract, considerably longer than that for personal injury, applies in such a case.
Many if not most nursing home residents are in a vulnerable physical and/or mental state.
Placing a loved one in such a facility necessarily entails trust on the part of the family as well as the resident.
Since the resident resides in the nursing home, the family has comparatively limited access and opportunity to learn if the resident is being neglected or mistreated.
If entrusting one’s money to an investment company creates a business relationship of trust and accountability, one would hope, at least in principle, that entrusting a valued family member to the care of a business entity such as a nursing home would carry similar responsibilities. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, LOUISIANA, 1996.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has ruled that Louisiana’s ten year statute of limitations for breach of contract, not the state’s one year statute of limitations for personal injury lawsuits, applies to a civil lawsuit filed against a nursing home by the family to recover monetary damages for abuse or neglect of a family member who at one time resided in the nursing home.
Note that each individual state has jurisdiction to set its own statutes of limitations for various categories of civil lawsuits. There are few generalities about statutes of limitations that would hold true across the board, except that in most states the statute of limitations for filing suit for a breach of contract is considerably longer than the statutory time allowed to file a personal injury case.
If a case is not started by the plaintiff or his or her legal representative, by filing the case in court or by serving the summons and complaint upon the defendant as required by state law, within the time set by state law as the applicable statute of limitations, the right to sue expires simply due to the passage of time, regardless of the actual legal merits of the lawsuit.
The number of years within which to sue is rigidly defined by state law. However, the courts have considerable latitude in how they may conceptualize the legal nature of a particular case so as to choose one limitations period rather than another, and in defining the operative event which starts the time limit running.
It is imperative that knowledgeable local legal counsel, familiar with state statutes, court precedents and rules of court, be consulted for any risk management decision to write off a potential claim for expiration of the statute of limitations. Schenck vs. Centers, 917 F. Supp. 432 (E.D. La., 1996).
More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/abuse-patient.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/abuse-inflicted-pain.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/abuse-neglect-disqualified.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/abuse1.htm