Our case involved an elderly resident at Sunrise Care who developed severe, avoidable pressure ulcers and suffered a debilitating fall, leading to a rapid decline in health. The core challenge was the facility's deliberate strategy of obstruction and deflection. They claimed the resident's complications were due to her “frail baseline condition” and pre-existing diabetes, not neglect.
All internal incident reports were vague, and the staff’s daily care logs had been meticulously filled out in retrospect, creating a false paper trail of adequate care. We faced a powerful corporate entity that had insulated itself with seemingly complete documentation, making it extraordinarily difficult to prove that the harm was a direct result of their failures rather than natural decline.
We overcame this by looking beyond the facility’s curated records and finding the human truth beneath them. Through subpoenas, we obtained payroll and staffing schedules that proved critical understaffing during the shifts in question, directly violating state-mandated care ratios. We then located and interviewed several former Sunrise Care employees, whose testimonies revealed a consistent culture of rushing basic care and falsifying charts. Most critically, we matched the resident’s precipitous medical decline—documented in impartial hospital records following her transfer—with the periods of proven understaffing.
By juxtaposing the facility’s manufactured documentation with the hard evidence of staffing violations and the uncontroverted medical outcome, we shattered their defense. This compelled the facility’s insurers to settle for a substantial amount that provided for the resident’s specialized care and held the institution accountable.
Result: Our client’s family obtained the resources necessary for their loved one’s ongoing specialized care, and the evidence contributed to a state regulatory investigation into the facility’s practices.