Columbia Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers

Seeing a loved one in a nursing home is often difficult for family members, even in the best of situations. It’s nothing less than horrific when a vulnerable elderly person, relying on nursing home staff and management for their care, is subject to abuse and neglect. Unfortunately, the tragedy of nursing home abuse is all too common, both here in South Carolina and across the country. 

The South Carolina nursing home abuse lawyers at Mann Blake & Jackson have a long track record of taking up big cases and winning big settlements, including those in excess of $50 million. From our Columbia office, we serve all of South Carolina. 

Call today at (803) 525-1645 or contact us online to set up a consultation. 

What Is Nursing Home Abuse?

The National Center for Elder Abuse (NCEA) says that almost half of nursing care residents report suffering direct physical abuse. If the issue is neglect, that figure rises to 95 percent. Abuse and neglect may constitute the basis for a lawsuit against the offending institution. 

It’s important to note that abuse and neglect need not be intentional. The issue is whether or not the nursing home and its staff were negligent. This can simply mean that a reasonable standard of care was not provided. 

As an example, one reason for nursing home residents having their needs neglected is that there aren’t enough staffers to care for them. Management might be held liable under these circumstances for failing to staff appropriately, even if this poor decision-making was simply the result of incompetence rather than malice. 

Nursing home residents often need to be helped out of bed, sometimes including with lifts that move them from a bed to a chair. What happens if a staffer is careless is putting an elderly person in the lift and a serious injury results? In circumstances like these, it’s unlikely the staffer acted negligently on purpose. But if they failed to exercise the standard of care appropriate to the situation, there can still be liability. 

Laws are in place at both the federal level—the 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act—and here at the state level in South Carolina through the Adult Protection law, that grant nursing home residents basic legal rights. 

These rights include, among other things, the ability to give voice to their problems with the facility or any staff without fearing retribution. They have the right to flexibility regarding when their loved ones visit. They have the right to participation in decisions regarding their medical treatment. 

A nursing home resident also has the right to be treated with dignity and respect. They are not to be discriminated against. And while privacy issues can be particularly sensitive in a nursing home, the residents do maintain a basic right to privacy. 

When these rights are violated can be a gray area. An experienced South Carolina nursing home abuse attorney will have the benefit of past cases, in understanding what type of behavior the courts will not tolerate and what evidence is required to prove it.