It’s pretty clear that those of us at ThePopTort don’t like it when lawmakers tell jurors what to do by legislatively “capping” compensation that juries can award. But when state lawmakers do go down that mistaken road, they must, at the very least, have exceptions for gross negligence or reckless misconduct. That’s what Oklahoma recently did.
And a story we found from the Tulsa World shows why exceptions like this are so important. A whistleblower suit brought by a former housekeeper at the Cimarron Pointe Care Center (one of six Oklahoma nursing homes and one assisted living facility owned by one Eddie Martin), provides a troubling glimpse at exactly how egregious resident abuse can be.
The former housekeeper, Diana Harris, saw “a male resident who had been left in his own waste for so many hours that he had feces caked on to his leg from his hip to below his knee, and had wet himself at least one time." When Harris reported this to a supervisor and two aides, the decision was made to leave the man “for the next shift”—which didn’t come on for another two and a half hours.
Harris also reported that an elderly woman who was paralyzed below the waist and had soiled herself, managed to roll into the hallway and ask for help, only to be “laughed at” by nurses. Still another resident, who was unable to sit up alone, was left on a bench in the shower, which resulted in her falling and being injured.
Once the staff learned Harris intended to go beyond just alerting her supervisors to these abuses (which was obviously not working) and involve her husband, a retired private investigator with a reputation for exposing elder abuse, she was fired.
Needless to say, we know nursing home abuse, such as that witnessed by Harris, is a terrible, ongoing problem in America—and one that lawsuits can be instrumental in helping to remedy. Here’s hoping that if any of these residents do bring suit, Oklahoma law allows the cases to go forward.
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