In a ruling that could have implications for other long-term care providers facing COVID-related liability cases, a jury has cleared a Tennessee nursing home of responsibility in the death of a patient that occurred during a major COVID-19 outbreak at the facility in 2020.
The jury found that while the Gallatin Center for Rehabilitation and Healing in Gallatin, TN, was negligent during the early days of the pandemic, it was not responsible for the death of 89-year-old resident Clara Ruth Summers. As a result, the nursing home will not have to pay civil damages to the family of Summers, who brought the suit.
Defense attorneys praised the jury’s verdict and said they feel it vindicates the nursing home of any wrongdoing in the woman’s death.
“We are happy for all the staff who worked at the facility who were unfairly blamed for the first major COVID outbreak in the state that was not their fault,” Howard Hayden, an attorney for the nursing home, told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
The March 2020 COVID outbreak at the nursing home was a highly publicized event that caused 25 deaths and required the National Guard to come in to administer tests, resulting in the evacuation of almost 200 residents, according to a report in the Gallatin News.
Summers was the first resident to die in the outbreak and her daughter filed a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging that gross negligence by the facility in handling the outbreak led to her death.
In its verdict, the jury did find that the facility had acted negligently during the outbreak but did not find that negligence resulted in Summers’ death.
Hayden said the jury found that there were some staff issues with the COVID screening process at the facility during the early days of the pandemic, but he noted that much of the guidance for COVID screening from the CDC and state regulators had not yet been developed and there was no widespread COVID testing available at the time.
“The jury concluded those issues were not the cause of this poor lady’s death,” he said.
More cases ahead
Despite the verdict, the facility is still facing lawsuits from the families of other patients who died in the outbreak.
Attorney Clint Kelly, who represented Summers’ family and is also representing 24 other families who have filed lawsuits against the nursing home, said he was disappointed by the jury’s verdict. But he believes his team proved its case that the facility acted negligently and plans to move forward with other cases.
“I know that this was the first case in Tennessee where a jury found a nursing home was negligent in failing to respond to COVID properly and failing to protect its residents,” Kelly told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.”This verdict tells me I’m on the right track.”
Hayden hopes the jury’s verdict will discourage plaintiff lawyers in other jurisdictions from bringing COVID-related cases against nursing homes who were doing their best to control the spread of the disease during the unprecedented pandemic. He said this is at least the third case he is aware of where juries have ruled in favor of nursing homes in COVID-related wrongful death cases.
“I’m not aware of a single case where a plaintiff has been successful in any of these cases,” he said.
One of the first, and most closely watched, decisions in a COVID-19 lawsuit involved the nursing home where the first widespread outbreak of the virus was discovered in early 2020. A federal jury found that Life Care Centers of Kirkland, WA, was not liable for the deaths of two residents who succumbed to the novel coronavirus. Other providers also have been found not liable in court actions around the country, though many lawsuits are still pending in various jurisdictions.
