Wrongful Death Lawsuits And More: Why Nursing Homes Are Getting Sued Due To COVID-19

Negligence and wrongful death lawsuits are swarming nursing homes as facilities are accused of failing to contain COVID-19 and neglecting to treat their patients.

According to the New York Times, an audit released by NY State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration failed to openly report the deaths of over 4,000 nursing home patients. “Our audit findings are extremely troubling,” DiNapoli stated. “The public was misled by those at the highest level of state government through distortion and suppression of the facts when New Yorkers deserved the truth.”

The state’s nursing home industry claims that much of the damage that COVID caused was uncontrollable due to insufficient staffing and lack of testing resources, as not much was known about the virus at the time. According to the Wall Street Journal, a myriad of lawsuits have been filed against nursing home facilities in the state throughout the last month.

In Buffalo, a judge gave the green light for a lawsuit against a nursing home in the city, which was initially arranged in April of last year by Cecelia Robertson representing her sister, who died due to COVID at the Humboldt House and Rehabilitation Nursing Center in April 2020. Attorney Joseph Ciaccio says the nursing home in question failed to adequately control the COVID wave. According to local news station WKBW-TV, the nursing home attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed, claiming that the state's Emergency Disaster Treatment Protection Act gave exemption to health care facilities which protected them from accountability for COVID-19.

NBC News reports that Marie King, a 79-year-old transgender woman, had her application for residency at a nursing home denied and has well-grounded means to file a lawsuit against the Maine facility.