East Bay Area Nursing Home Served With Civil Lawsuit Alleging Neglect Of Paraplegic Patient

Nov. 3, 2008 - PRLog -- Walnut Creek, California –    

The Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Law Center announced today that a local San Francisco East Bay Area nursing home was served last week with a civil lawsuit filed by one of its paraplegic patients, 39 year old Grover Brown, Jr.  

In his civil lawsuit, Alameda County Superior Court Case No. RG08389779, Grover Brown alleges that when he became a patient in 2007 at the High Street Care Center nursing home in Oakland he suffered from paraplegia, multiple sclerosis and other ailments that made him a non-ambulatory “dependant” within the class of persons protected by California’s “Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act” (California Welfare and Institutions Code Section 15600, et seq.).  Despite those protections, Mr. Brown alleges that High Street Care Center recklessly neglected his needs as a non-ambulatory patient, including the need to protect him from pressure sores, also known as bed sores or decubitus ulcers.  Mr. Brown alleges that, as a direct result of the reckless neglect and abuse of his caretakers at High Street Care Center, he suffered horrific pressure sores which led to infection of his bone and bone marrow so severe that it required surgical removal of his coccyx.  

The civil complaint, filed on Grover Brown’s behalf, alleges that “Defendants and their staff at High Street did not even take the most basic medically advisable precautions to prevent and/or treat Grover’s pressures sores, including but not limited to, failing to properly position, turn and move Grover in his bed, failing to take proper precautions for decubitus ulcers, failing to administer proper treatments, and, ultimately, showing a complete and utter disregard for Grover’s health and risk of for pressure sores.  Thereafter, Defendants and their staff continued in recklessly failing to properly prevent, monitor, assess and treat Grover’s pressure sores as detailed in an August 2007 Statement of Deficiencies issued by the California Department of Public Health.”  

Attorney Jay P. Renneisen, a partner at the Walnut Creek based Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Law Center, who is representing Grover Brown, stated that he was “shocked to learn how this nursing home recklessly abandoned Grover even though they knew his condition as a paraplegic with severe multiple sclerosis made him hugely susceptible to pressure sores.”   “Here is a paraplegic who completely relied on the nursing home to turn him in his bed, and yet they failed to do that and the result was a Stage IV pressure sore that led to extreme pain and infection so bad that it actually required the surgical removal of Grover’s tailbone”, said attorney Renneisen.    

PDF copies of the  lawsuit and  the August 2007 formal Statement of Deficiencies issued by the California Department of Public Health can be obtained by e-mailing Jay P. Renneisen at jay@NoElderAbuse.com or by calling the Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Law Center at 925-280-8900.

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The Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Law Center is an organization that vigorously represents victims and family members of victims of nursing home neglect and elder abuse. Call toll free1-877-270-4700 or visit www.NoElderAbuse.com for more information