Pair Files Wrongful Death Suit in Alleged Neglect of Mother, 85

At first, it was the small things that troubled Barbara Aguilar about her mother’s care at an Oxnard nursing home. A missing pair of eyeglasses, misplaced dentures.

Then came problems with hygiene and concerns about whether her mother was getting enough to eat and drink.

After eight months, Anna Mary Dumont, 85, was hospitalized with dehydration and bedsores. A week later, in late 1997, she died.

Now, Aguilar and her brother are suing Shoreline Care Center for wrongful death, neglect and elder abuse in a lawsuit aimed at spurring reform in the state’s troubled nursing-home industry.

“We filed this lawsuit to make sure the pattern of elder abuse that caused our mother’s death never happens again to someone else’s mom,” Aguilar said in a statement through her attorney.

Filed by Oxnard lawyer Mark Hiepler, who has earned a national reputation for battling HMOs, the suit accuses Shoreline of fraud and unfair business practices for reducing patient care to increase profits.

The lawsuit alleges that Shoreline and its parent company, Covenant Care California Inc., expect that “few adverse consequences will flow from their mistreatment of their elderly and vulnerable clientele.”

Shoreline Administrative Director Maggie Parreno said last week she was unaware a lawsuit had been filed.

“All I could comment on is we give the appropriate level of care that the residents deserve,” Parreno said. A spokesman for Covenant Care said the Orange County company had not been served with the lawsuit.

At the very least, Hiepler said, his clients want back the $21,747 they paid Shoreline in monthly bills for their mother’s care. More important, they want to send a message.

“Homes that take care of the most fragile in our society, the elderly, need to be held accountable for their neglect,” Hiepler said. “There has be to be another way to change their behavior, and that is where the civil suits can go a long way.”

On April 13, 1997, Aguilar of Camarillo placed her mother in Shoreline, which at 193 beds is one of the largest skilled nursing homes in Ventura County.

Dumont already had a number of health problems, including dementia, dehydration and a seizure disorder, which required 24-hour care, according to the lawsuit.

Aguilar soon began to suspect that the staff at Shoreline was neglecting her mother. During visits, she noticed fecal matter under her mother’s fingernails and complained, the lawsuit says. She also raised concerns about how much Dumont was given to eat and drink.

On Dec. 23, Dumont’s failing health led to her transfer to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. She was diagnosed as dehydrated and suffering from bedsores. On Dec. 30, she died. Her death certificate lists dehydration, kidney failure and an intestinal infection as the cause of death.

Early in 1998, Aguilar asked the state Department of Health Services to investigate Shoreline. Regulators found that the nursing home had violated a series of health codes in the months before Dumont’s death.

According to a November 1998 state report, the facility failed to provide adequate amounts of fluids to Dumont, failed to document the amount of liquid she received and put mittens on her hands that prevented her from drinking. The mittens were intended to keep her from scratching herself.

Specifically, the report states that in the 23 days before Dumont’s hospitalization, the amount of fluid given her was recorded only three times.

State regulators asked Shoreline to develop a correction plan. Without admitting guilt, Shoreline’s Parreno committed to improving care by updating patient care plans every three months and better educating the nursing staff.

According to Ventura County’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman, a nonprofit group of state-certified volunteers who investigate nursing-home complaints, Shoreline is not a problem facility and regularly passes unscheduled checks.

“We’ve always been able to resolve any problems,” said Long-Term Care Executive Director Pam Schuman. “They do give good care.”

But last year Shoreline was listed among the state’s top violators of patients’ rights in a report issued by a watchdog group, California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

The group cited the Oxnard home four times in 1997 for violations that presented “imminent danger of death or serious harm.” Investigated in 1998, Dumont’s case was not among them.

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Concerns about California’s nursing home industry prompted a nine-month federal probe in 1997. After reviewing inspection records from all 1,370 nursing homes in the state, the General Accounting Office concluded that one in every three facilities has “serious or potentially life-threatening problems.”

California was selected because of allegations to the Senate Aging Committee that patients were dying of neglect. During testimony before the committee last July, a nursing home inspector reported that many homes focus not on patient care, but “running the facility as cheaply as possible.”

But according to Long-Term Care’s Schuman: “That doesn’t happen in Ventura County.”

Instead, elderly residents find adequate care in 132 county-based facilities that are regularly checked for deficiencies by both state regulators and volunteers, Schuman said.

“On the whole, these facilities are very good,” she said. “There are things you find wrong, but at least we’ve got the ombudsman to review and investigate and resolve problems.”

In coming months, Hiepler expects to conduct his own inquiry into Shoreline’s practices. He and partner James McGinley will also be watching a case that is testing the legal waters of elder-abuse litigation.

A 1992 state law--the first of its kind in the country--exposes care providers to costly litigation if they mistreat patients. It allows plaintiffs to recover attorneys fees and lets juries award pain-and-suffering damages to patients or their survivors.

But the statute is being challenged in a Bay Area case where a nursing home appealed a judgment by claiming the elder abuse law runs afoul of existing caps on damages awards. The case was argued before the California Supreme Court last month, and a decision is pending.

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Hiepler said the high court’s ruling could open the door for more lawsuits against nursing homes.

“It has a real potential to allow those corporations found guilty in these cases to get appropriate punishment,” he said. “And it gives corporations a reason to clean up their way of doing business.”