'Impossible Lawsuit': Families Find Few Options To Sue Long-Term Care Over COVID Deaths

WBUR ^ | 8/19/2021 | Paige Sutherland

[simpson96]

Suzanna Smith’s mother was supposed to spend a few weeks at a rehab facility in Fitchburg to recover from surgery, but she never came home.

“She went in for back surgery, and she died from COVID. It’s still so surreal to me,” Smith said. Her mother, Masae Hodges, was 73 when she died last year.

Hodges is one of more than 6,000 residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in Massachusetts who have died of COVID-19, roughly one third of all COVID deaths in the state. But for grieving relatives like Smith, there are few legal options if they believe these facilities should have done more to protect their loved ones during the pandemic.

According to Smith, her family didn’t know that the facility, Fitchburg Healthcare, had been experiencing COVID cases when Hodges was transferred by the hospital. After she arrived, they struggled to get information about how she was doing.(snip)

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, not staff from the facility, notified Smith's family that her mother had contracted COVID. Smith remembers that a state employee called her father to report the test results.

“And that was a real surprise to my father because the nursing home never, ever communicated that they were testing my mother, one. And two, that they had COVID patients,” Smith said.

She and her father were furious. They couldn’t visit her mother because of COVID safety regulations, and her health quickly worsened.

(snip)

Other factors beyond the immunity laws can discourage attorneys from taking such cases. One is a general lack of evidence because COVID restrictions kept visitors out of health care facilities for many weeks. Another is the concern that jurors will be more sympathetic to caregivers, who were on the frontlines of the crisis.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Another is the concern that jurors will be more sympathetic to caregivers, who were on the frontlines of the crisis.

Those were yesterday's heroes. Today those very same heroes are getting their jobs threatened if they don't take the jab.

[jacknhoo]

Sacrificial lambs to drive up the death counts to aid in ushering in this totalitarian authoritarian regime.

Though communist Massachusetts is notorious for killing the elderly in nursing homes to free up beds for another one-time payment they receive to care for state dependent residents until they die. One of their favorite tactics is to have them so far gone with pneumonia before they call an ambulance to take them to the hospital that all hope is gone by the time they get them there.

[9YearLurker]

Francis Boyle, the law professor who wrote our bioweapons law, successfully defended military members from the anthrax vax 2 decades ago, etc., yesterday advised anyone who has lost a loved one to Covid or the vax to take their evidence to local or state officials and demand that a grand jury be called for their murder case. He says that’s necessary because the Feds are too compromised.

He recommends Fauci and crew for Covid deaths and the vax pharma company brass for vax deaths (watch from the 34:15 mark of this video):

https://banned.video/watch?id=612177a73ab9b56325da2d9e

He says the Federal laws for civil immunity for the pharma companies don’t apply for the criminal cases he is recommending.

[Flick Lives]

Smith would like to sue Fitchburg Healthcare over her mother’s death, but so far she has not found an attorney willing to help her.

“We are hearing that it would be an impossible lawsuit to take on,” Smith said.

The main hurdle is emergency state and federal laws designed to give long-term care facilities, hospitals and other health care providers broad immunity from legal actions related to their care during the pandemic.

—

Gov. Baker got campaign donations from nursing homes. He signed legislation exempting them from lawsuits during a pandemic. Very cozy.

[Alberta's Child]

Perhaps the biggest hurdle of all is that it’s impossible to document monetary losses in a cause of action related to the death of an elderly person. A wrongful death lawsuit involving a younger victim will include tangible financial losses such as a lifetime loss of income, added costs for family members who must now raise surviving children, etc.

None of these apply when the victim is elderly. In fact, when you sue someone over the death of a person in a nursing home, you are likely to face a legal team that specializes in a bizarre, morbid area of law where they will calculate all the money the plaintiffs have SAVED by having Grandma die at the age of 80 instead of surviving another ten years.

Since the big line items in the calculation of compensatory damages are gone, these cases must be built on vague, subjective measures of things like “loss of affection” that are much more difficult to quantify.

[9YearLurker]

In this case, it is murder from Fauci and company and a criminal case that should be pursued (per Francis Boyle).

They are going after the wrong target with the wrong charges.

[Trillian]

From hero to patient zero.