Award News from Milwaukee Nursing Home Abuse Attorneys
WI Nursing Home Pays $2.25 Million in Wrongful Death Suit
On behalf of Milwaukee personal injury attorney Ric Domnitz of Domnitz & Domnitz, S.C. posted in Nursing Home Abuse on Monday, September 27, 2010.
A large company that runs The Willows nursing home in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, recently agreed to pay $2.25 million plus an undisclosed amount for costs to settle a wrongful death and nursing home abuse lawsuit stemming from the death of one of its residents. This settlement marks one of the largest ever payouts in a wrongful death suit between a nursing home resident and nursing facility in Wisconsin. The suit was filed by the husband of Cynthia Wilms, who died in 2007 from complications from an infection that went untreated by The Willow staff, according to the wrongful death suit.
Wilms was admitted to The Willows Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in 2007 after having undergone elective hip replacement surgery. She was scheduled to have a short stint at the facility while she was undergoing rehabilitation for her new hip. Instead of staying at the facility for a short period of time and returning home to her husband of 50 years, she died from a severe infection. The 72-year-old wife, mother, grandmother and piano teacher grew sicker and sicker from a surgical wound that had developed into what is a usually treatable staph infection. The suit claims that the nursing home, which was later found to be chronically understaffed, did nothing to help Wilms treat her infections or even call a doctor to provide care.
A news report published about the case detailed that the facility failed to do anything about the woman’s condition even as “drainage from the wound soaked her clothes and bedding so regularly that her husband took her stained underwear and slacks home every night to wash them.” Wilms’s husband expressed that he filed the wrongful death lawsuit in the first place to ensure that people in other nursing homes get better care than was provided to his wife. He expressed that he would never want this to happen to anyone else.
Source: Capital Times, “Nursing homes pays wrongful death suit; victim’s family hopes to educate others,” 09/27/2010
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