Almost 400,000 individuals live in California’s 1,200 licensed nursing facilities. The vast majority of them provide exceptional elder care for their residents. Notwithstanding that care and the efforts of the facilities’ staff, our elders continue to suffer injuries in nursing home slip and fall accidents.
If you or one of your elderly relatives have been injured in a nursing home in southern California, you should always consult with a Los Angeles personal injury attorney from our firm. We can help you understand who is liable for that accident and whether it gives rise to a valid claim for damages.
Nursing homes must comply with a host of federal and state regulations. We have the knowledge and experience to cut through those regulations and to establish who is liable.
A California Nursing Home’s Duty of Care
The Federal 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act and the California Resident Bill of Rights establish strict minimum standards that nursing homes must meet to maintain their status as licensed care facilities. In addition to a facility’s basic obligations to safely maintain its premises, the facility must periodically assess each resident’s health and provide comprehensive care plans for each resident.
This includes summaries of rehabilitation services that a resident might need. A care facility may be liable for a resident’s slip and fall injury if it failed to provide those services and that failure was a direct cause of the fall.
Premises Liability and Nursing Home Medical Negligence
Like all other property owners, nursing homes have a responsibility to keep their facilities safe from known hazards. Nursing home operators will be liable if their failure to meet that responsibility causes someone to slip and fall and suffer an injury. An experienced personal injury lawyer will look beyond premises liability and will ask whether medical negligence contributed to the accident.
The medical condition of a nursing home resident might require the facility to provide handrails in corridors, bathrooms, and bedrooms. When licensed care facilities fail to meet these standards, they may be liable for medical negligence when a resident slips and falls and suffers broken bones, head injuries, contusions, and injuries to internal organs.
Proving Liability for a Nursing Home Slip and Fall
Nursing home residents are sometimes reluctant to discuss details of slip and fall accidents. They might feel that the staff of a care facility will retaliate against them, or that pursuing a nursing home accident claim will place too much of a burden on their loved ones. At Salamati Law, we have extensive experience in representing injured nursing home residents and their families. This includes situations where the resident would prefer not to discuss a fall or cannot recall all of the details of the accident.
Our lawyers understand the nature of the records and information that nursing facilities are required to record and maintain. We use that information to build objective descriptions of how nursing home slip and fall accidents happen. We also use that information to understand how a facility could have prevented those accidents by exercising a proper degree of care.
Compassionate Attorneys for Nursing Home Slip and Fall Claims
If you or a member of your family has suffered serious injuries in a slip and fall accident in a southern California nursing home, please see our website or call us directly to speak with a Los Angeles slip and fall lawyer. We can discuss how you can pursue your claim to recover the largest available compensation for losses and injuries. Our initial consultations are always free.
