In the Middle : Nursing Home Patient Evicted in Dispute Over Payment

Peering out through the window of her Inglewood apartment last December, Marian White was startled to see two nursing home officials with her frail 75-year-old father in tow. After she let them in, White recalled earlier this week, the officials informed her that they had evicted her father, who suffers from heart and kidney disease.

Despite her protests that she could not care for her father, the officials left without him.

“They just dumped him here like a sack of potatoes,” said the 55-year-old Inglewood woman, who has been fighting ever since with the Angeles Convalescent Center East over her father’s bill. “At first I didn’t even have a bed for him. It’s been a nightmare.”

The eviction led the Whites to seek help from Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a nonprofit legal agency for the elderly. It has filed a novel lawsuit against the nursing home, arguing that state laws protecting renters from eviction also apply to nursing home patients.

The suit, filed last month in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that the nursing home wrongfully evicted the senior White--also named Marion White (though spelled differently)--and violated his patient’s rights, inflicting emotional stress on him.

“It was calculated cruelty,” said Robert Ross, a Bet Tzedek attorney. When the elderly are moved without adequate preparation, Ross said, they suffer “transfer trauma”--mental and physical stress, which in some cases has even been known to be fatal.

“Transfer trauma isn’t an exotic idea that lawyers have thought up,” Ross said, referring to state guidelines that seek to minimize the problem. “It’s a serious consideration.”

Jerry Eisinger, administrator of the convalescent center, denies the allegations. She said the center’s physician gave the green light for the move. Eisinger also said the matter was one of financial responsibility. She alleges that White’s daughter refused for six months to use her father’s Social Security and pension payments to pay for his room and board at the facility.

“We aren’t a charitable institution,” Eisinger said. “We’d have to close down if no one paid their bills.”

A steelworker in Newport, Ky., for 30 years, the senior White lived alone in a small house there after his retirement until his health began to fail, his daughter said. Robbed and burglarized several times, he finally moved into a rented room to be safe. His daughter finally brought him out to California, where his health continued to deteriorate.

At one point, according to the daughter, she placed him in an alcoholism recovery center. “He hasn’t drank in five years,” she said. Her father then lived in a retirement home until a bout with pneumonia put him in a hospital. After a brief stay at another convalescent home, he was admitted to Angeles Convalescent Center.

When he first entered the 55-bed facility, the elder White was considered a short-term patient, paying part of his Social Security and pension checks--$194 a month total--to cover the bills for two months.

It soon became apparent to nursing home officials that he would have to have long-term care, which, under state Medicaid rules, required him to pay almost his entire pension and Social Security benefits for his upkeep--keeping only $35 in spending money for himself.

However, the checks were signed over to his daughter, and she refused to pay the bills, Eisinger said. “Finally when the bill got to be $5,000, we told her we could not keep him. We let her know in advance and we got a doctor’s approval to move him,” Eisinger said.

Under state nursing home and Medicaid guidelines, residents can be evicted for not paying rent, because of medical problems and if their behavior is detrimental to the welfare of other patients.

“We felt bad about it,” Eisinger said. “He’s a nice little old man and has been pushed around by his family. . . . We wouldn’t mind taking him back if this could be cleared up.”

Ross said White’s daughter had not paid the bill because of her confusion over whether her father should pay as a long-term or a short-term patient. Ross also said the nursing home failed to call in a county ombudsman, who should have mediated between the two parties.

The heart of the legal issue, Ross said, is the state’s legal definition of a tenant. “The narrow legal question is whether a nursing home tenant hires real property. Of course they do. . . . Are our most vulnerable citizens entitled to the same protection against eviction as ordinary tenants?”

Under state law, if a tenant refuses to vacate a dwelling voluntarily, a landlord must get a court order to evict. After such an order is obtained from a judge, the county marshal then gives the tenant five days’ notice to move. If the tenant fails to move, the marshal then evicts him.

Despite Eisinger’s insistence that she provided Marian White with advance notice of her father’s impending eviction, Ross said White should have had the same warning period as other tenants.

Because of White’s advanced age, his case may be heard in the next few months, unlike most civil proceedings in the county, which can take up to five years to go to trial.

Meanwhile, the elder White says he wants to return to the nursing home. Sitting on the patio of his daughter’s apartment earlier this week, White said: “I’d like to go back there. I had friends there, we played cards, I got good care, they fixed me dinner.”