Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect

The Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed a jury award against the Baltimore City Police Department in Houghton v. Forrest on Friday. Here were the facts:

Houghton observed a drug sale on North Eutaw Street in Baltimore City through a security camera feed. Three persons participated in the sale: the drug dealer, a male purchaser, and an alleged female purchaser who was wearing a white shirt or coat. As the transaction was being completed, Houghton contacted an arresting team, comprising Officer Timothy Williams and another officer, and instructed them to arrest the participants in the sale. The arresting team took the dealer and the male purchaser into custody, finding drugs on each of them, but the alleged female purchaser had left the scene. Houghton then witnessed, through the video feed, the alleged female purchaser embrace a second woman nearby. Houghton assumed that the embrace concealed the transfer or sale of drugs from the female purchaser to the second woman. This second woman was wearing a black jacket, dark jeans, and carrying a red umbrella. Houghton moved the camera back to the arrest, and in doing so, lost sight of the second woman.

After monitoring the arrest, Houghton scanned the area for the female purchaser and the second woman. The female purchaser was no longer in view, but Houghton could see someone whom he believed to be the second woman. In fact, the person in Houghton’s view was Forrest, who was standing some distance away at a nearby bus stop. Forrest was wearing different colored pants and jacket than the second woman, though both were carrying red umbrellas. Houghton instructed Williams to arrest Forrest. Williams approached Forrest, and asked if she had “anything illegal” on her person; Forrest said she did not, and consented to a search of her person. The search revealed no contraband, but Houghton nonetheless instructed Williams to arrest Forrest. Williams suggested that Houghton review the video footage to make certain that Forrest was indeed the second woman. Houghton did not do so, but nonetheless confirmed that Forrest was to be arrested. Williams handcuffed and arrested Forrest, over Forrest’s protests, and placed her with the other arrestees. Forrest testified at trial that she overheard Williams discussing the possibility that he may have arrested the wrong person, and that Williams was instructed to take her into custody nonetheless. Forrest was moved to Central Booking, though she was not summoned to court and charges against her were eventually dismissed.

An article that John Bratt and I wrote has been accepted for publication in December in Trial, the flagship publication for the American Association of Justice. The article is about mediations in catastrophic personal injury cases. We finished what I hope is the final draft today.

We added on the Miller & Zois website the internal list that our lawyers keep of arbitrators and mediators in Maryland who we believe mediate or arbitrate personal injury cases.

As we make clear, this is not a list of our recommended mediators or arbitrators, just a collection of those that are doing the work. We refer to the list if arbitrating or mediating a case so it occurred to me that others might want to have the same option, be it another personal injury lawyer or even an insurance company.

Conventional wisdom was that a part of the problem with nursing homes is that too many were mom and pop shops without structure, organization, and accountability.

Make sense? It seems logical. Reality may provide a different picture. The sale of Habana Health Care Center, a Tampa nursing home, by a private investment firm hopefully meant better care for residents. It meant big profits for investors of this nursing home and thousands of nursing homes across the country that large investment companies have purchased in the last five years.

Yet since the nursing home was sold in 2002, 15 residents have died and their survivors have blamed negligent care as the reason for their deaths. You can read more about this story in the New York Times, which did a lengthy article yesterday on the privatization of nursing homes. The fear now is that the mom and pop nursing homes had the upside of at least a personal connection to the homes and the residents. Maybe Nursing Home 2.0, the for-profit version, is even more deadly.