Choosing the right lawyer to handle your nursing home case
I write a lot of articles in this blog about how to choose the right nursing home, when to move your loved one to a safer nursing home, and many ways to keep your loved one safe in the nursing home. Our preference would be that everybody chooses a safe nursing home for their loved one, where that person receives exceptional care and that no nursing home resident ever suffers an injury. Tragically, that is not the case. We receive phone calls every single day from people who have a loved one who was in a nursing home, and that individual suffered an injury, and in many cases, died as a result. If you are in that position, if someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home, how do you choose the right attorney? It can be very challenging. There are a lot of lawyers out there spending a lot of money on advertising. They have billboards and TV commercials. But how many of them have handled hundreds and hundreds of nursing home cases? How many of them have tried dozens of nursing home cases all over the State of Ohio? How many of them have argued nursing home cases to Courts of Appeals all over the State of Ohio including to the Ohio Supreme Court?
Here at The Dickson Firm, 95% of our time is spent on nursing home cases. The owners and the operators the nursing homes in Ohio know exactly who we are as we have handled many cases against them.
I have tried more cases for the plaintiff against the owners and operators of nursing homes in Ohio than any other attorney in the State of Ohio.
There have only been two cases that have gone to the Ohio Supreme Court dealing with the rights of nursing home residents and their families. I was involved in both of those cases. I was asked by the Ohio Association for Justice to write an amicus curiae or friend-of-the-court brief in the case of Cramer v. Auglaize Acres, 113 Ohio St. 3d 266, the only case that's ever gone to the Ohio Supreme Court that dealt with the Nursing Home Residents Bill of Rights and the cause of action that state law creates. The other case that went to the Ohio Supreme Court was Hayes v. The Oakridge Home, 122 Ohio St. 3d 63; 2009 Ohio 2054. That case involving involuntary forced arbitration in nursing home cases. Many nursing homes hide an arbitration clause in their admission paperwork, and then when they neglect or abuse a resident, and that resident or his or her family tries to bring a lawsuit, they attempt to avoid litigation by trying to force the case to involuntary binding arbitration. I have been fighting involuntary binding arbitration in nursing home cases for over twenty (20) years. A vast majority of the reported appellate cases on this issue are cases that I have pursued and won. Only one case has ever gone to the Ohio Supreme Court on this issue. The cases cited above which I handled.
A lot of law firms hold themselves out as being capable of handling nursing home cases. However, nursing home work is very specific. It involves multiple state and federal laws and regulations. It involves very specific documentation. It involves a significant quantity of regulation through CMS. And it is very, very challenging for someone who does not handle a lot of nursing home cases to be able to handle a nursing home case effectively.
Unfortunately, The Dickson Firm handles a number of legal malpractice cases against other attorneys who have mishandled nursing home cases and caused harm to their clients. Few things are more tragic than to see a family who has lost a loved one due to the neglect of a nursing home, and then has been the victim of legal malpractice when an attorney, who did not know how to handle a nursing home case, tried to handle a nursing home case.
Someone without experience simply cannot know all the requirements of successfully handling a nursing home case.
If someone you love has been neglected or abused in a nursing home, please call us at 1-800-OHIO LAW as it would be our pleasure to talk with you and help you in any way that we can.