By nursing home abuse attorney, Blake Dickson

Despite the fact that we have more and more information available to us, often making a choice is actually more difficult. You try to choose a restaurant or a hotel in the city you are going to visit. You do a search to find out which is the best hotel or which is the best restaurant.

Unfortunately, many of the search results are driven by people promoting their businesses. Every hotel will tell you it is a wonderful hotel with clean rooms and good prices. Every restaurant will tell you it is the best. Unfortunately, when you actually arrive at a hotel or a restaurant or a resort, sometimes you are disappointed. Sometimes the promises that were made on line are simply false.

The same thing happens with choosing an attorney. Everyday, I see law firms and attorneys promoting themselves in television commercials and in internet advertisements in which they claim that they can handle your nursing home case.

The realty is there are very few attorneys in the State of Ohio who focus their practice on handling nursing home cases. There are even fewer who have actually tried a nursing home case. Clients choose a lawyer who does not have experience with nursing home cases and they are often disappointed with the results.

Sometimes we are contacted by these clients to represent them in a legal malpractice case against their lawyer for mishandling their case. I always think the same thing when that happens. Why didn’t this lawyer with no experience handling nursing home cases just refer the case to an experienced attorney?

So why choose The Dickson Firm?

Quite simply, I have handled more nursing home cases on behalf of the Plaintiff than any other attorney in the State of Ohio.

I have tried more nursing home cases to verdict on behalf of the Plaintiff than any other attorney in the State of Ohio.

The Ohio Supreme Court has only ever heard two cases that dealt with the issue of nursing home residents' rights. One of those cases was my case, and I argued that case to the Ohio Supreme Court.

The other case was handled by another attorney. However, the Ohio Association for Justice, which is the statewide Plaintiff lawyers’ organization in Ohio, asked me to write, what is known as, the “amicus curiae” or “friend of the court” brief on behalf of the Ohio Association for Justice in that case. I was personally involved with the only two cases that have gone to the Ohio Supreme Court on the issue of Nursing Home Residents Rights. No other lawyer in the State of Ohio can say that.

I have been handling nursing home cases for over twenty (25) years. When I first started handling these cases, I discovered that nursing homes often bury arbitration agreements in their admission paperwork.

The nursing home resident or their representative unwittingly signs the documents to have that resident admitted to the nursing home and buried in those documents is an agreement to arbitrate the case. Then the nursing home neglects the resident, abuses the resident, causes the resident injury, and the resident, or in many cases, after the resident passes away, their family, files a lawsuit against the owners and the operators of the nursing home. The owners and the operators of the nursing home turn around and file a motion asking the Court to permanently stay the case and force that case to binding arbitration. Often that arbitration is conducted by members of an organization that consists of attorneys who represent nursing homes and hospitals and doctors.

Often the rules are not fair. Often the costs of the arbitration are extremely high. The owners and the operators of nursing homes draft these arbitration agreements in a way that the terms are favorable to the nursing home and not to the nursing home resident or their family. The owners and the operators know that the they have a much better chance of winning an arbitration. If they lose the judgment against them is usually much lower than if the case was tried to a verdict. In addition, discovery is limited in an arbitration which is detrimental to the Plaintiff.

When I first started handling nursing home cases, I discovered that there were very few reported cases that dealt with this issue. Very few attorneys had fought these clauses. Even fewer attorneys had fought these clauses and taken that fight all the way to the Court of Appeals.

So there were very few Appellate decisions that dealt with this issue. I have argued this issue all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. If you were to do research on this issue currently, you would discover that many of the Court of Appeals decisions about this issue are from cases that I handled on behalf of my clients. I fought this issue hard, and today it is not as common for these nursing homes to try to force their cases to arbitration.

Nursing homes are highly regulated. As a result, there are a lot of documents that are relevant to the conduct of the nursing home. Nursing homes are surveyed on a regular basis and also in response to complaints. Medicare maintains documentation about the ownership of nursing homes. Medicare tracks quality measures involving the quality of care at the nursing homes. Medicare tracks staffing at the nursing homes. The nursing homes themselves have multiple documents.

As you may well imagine, nursing homes fight tooth and nail to avoid producing documents that are unfavorable to them. They try in a variety of ways to conceal the personnel files of their staff. They try to conceal the disciplinary issues they have had with their staff. They try to conceal the true owners and operators of the nursing home. Nursing homes try to pretend like a shell corporation that they have set up is the only true owner of the nursing home, when in reality the nursing home is often owned by a much larger corporation and, in many cases, by a series of individuals.

Here at The Dickson Firm we have handled thousands of nursing home cases. We know where to find the information that helps us win our cases for our clients. We know what to look for. We know where to find it. And we have argued these issues over and over again with courts throughout the State of Ohio. We know how to get the information that helps us win our cases.

If someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home and you are trying to figure out who the best lawyer is to handle your case, make sure you ask questions. How many nursing home cases have they tried to verdict? There are very few lawyers in the State of Ohio who can tell you that they have ever tried a nursing home case in Ohio for the Plaintiff.

There are even fewer who can tell you that they have tried multiple nursing home cases on behalf of the Plaintiff here in Ohio. Ask them how many nursing home cases they have handled. Have they ever sued the nursing home where your loved one was a resident?

One of the most important things to consider when choosing an attorney is to ask yourself what that attorney's reputation is. The owners and the operators of nursing homes in Ohio know who I am. I have handled cases against most, if not all, of the large nursing home chains who operate nursing homes here in Ohio. I have sued the companies that own these large groups of nursing homes. I have taken the depositions. Very often when I take the deposition of the senior management personnel of the nursing home chain, the CEO, the president, I ask them if they have ever been deposed before. Often I am shocked to learn that I am the first person to ever take their deposition, to ever compel them to come forward and give sworn testimony about the operation of the nursing home. When we sue a nursing home, we always check the docket to see if that nursing home has been sued in the past. Often they have not been sued.

The owners and the operators of nursing homes in Ohio know that we are relentless here at The Dickson Firm. We will keep pushing and keep probing until we find all of the relevant information. We will not hesitate to go to trial if that is what it takes to get a proper verdict for our client. We have litigation in counties throughout the State of Ohio. We aggressively pursue these cases to fruition on behalf of our clients. Because of our focus on handling nursing home cases, we have a quantity of nursing home cases that we are pursing at any one time, as well as a history of multiple cases that we have pursued in the past. This gives us insider information on the various nursing homes in Ohio. We understand their corporate structure. We understand how they operate. And we know the ones that have had issues with patient care in the past. In the more than twenty five (25) years that we have been handling nursing home cases, we have learned an incredible amount.

I was the chairman of the education committee for the Nursing Home Litigation Group which is the national litigation group that is a part of the American Association of Justice which is the national organization of Plaintiffs lawyers. I planned the educational programs for that group for three (3) years. I worked with some of the best speakers and most talented attorneys in the entire country. I have been devoted to the representation of nursing home residents and their families for decades. I can tell you that nursing home cases are not the kind of case that you can figure out on the fly. They are also not the kind of case that someone can figure out if they are only handling a single case. These cases require experience. These cases require knowledge. In addition to being an active member of the Nursing Home Litigation Group, I am also a member of an invitation-only group of experienced nursing home attorneys throughout the country. We collaborate and work together to develop our respective nursing home practices.

If someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home, please call us here at The Dickson Firm at 1 (800) OHIO LAW, as we would be happy to talk with you and help you in any way that we can. It would be my pleasure to use my decades of experience to help you and your family.

The Dickson Firm is based in Cleveland, Ohio