Suit Filed Over Bid to Evict Man From Nursing Home : Health care: Van Nuys facility did not notify wife who signed admission agreement of her appeal rights, court papers assert. Company says its forms comply with state rules.

When Shirley Podolsky managed to find a nursing home to care for her husband, Hyman, last July, she thought she had found a place where the 82-year-old Alzheimer’s victim could get long-term care.

But the nursing home’s attempt several days later to evict the man left her “devastated,” Podolsky, 78, said. “I couldn’t care for him myself.”

Even though nursing home officials let her husband stay, Podolsky filed a lawsuit Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court against the corporate owners of the Hillhaven home in Van Nuys, saying they forced her to sign an admission agreement that made an eviction attempt possible.

“The average person, including myself, doesn’t know what their rights are, and just sign these papers put in front of you,” said Podolsky, an accountant, who signed on behalf of her husband. He had been in custodial care for several years, she said, and required skilled nursing home care after a bout with pneumonia left him unable to walk.

The agreement gave Hillhaven the right to transfer or discharge Hyman Podolsky, according to her attorney, Eric Carlson of Bet Tzedek Legal Services. “The facility hadn’t notified her of her appeal rights” as required under federal law, he said.

The suit asks that Hillhaven’s owners be required to “cease use of illegal and unfair admission agreements.”

Mark Fortier, attorney for Hillhaven Corp. in Tacoma, Wash., had no comment on the suit, except to say that the chain’s California admission agreements were “reviewed and approved” by state regulators.

Paul H. Keller, a licensing and certification official with the state Department of Health Services, said his agency has not approved any nursing home admission agreements, pending efforts to coordinate state requirements with changes in federal regulations.

Carlson, head of Bet Tzedek’s nursing home advocacy project, said people sign admission agreements because “they are often vulnerable, dependent on these facilities, and intimidated.”