In early 2020, with reports of COVID-19 outbreaks making dire headlines, Trever Schapers worried about her father's safety in a nursing home in Queens.
"I feel that families are being ignored by judges and courts not recognizing that something needs to be done and changed," said Schapers, 48, who works in the medical field. "There needs to be accountability." Schapers alleged in a complaint to state health officials that the nursing home failed to advise her that it had admitted COVID-positive patients from a nearby hospital in March 2020. In early April, she received a call telling her the facility had some COVID-positive residents.About two weeks later, a social worker called to say that her father had a fever, but the staff did not test him to confirm COVID, according to Schapers' complaint.
While there's no full accounting of the outcomes, court filings show that judges have dismissed some suits outright, citing state or federal immunity provisions, while other cases have been settled under confidential terms. And many cases have stalled due to lengthy and costly arguments and appeals to hash out limits, if any, of immunity protection., which Congress passed in December 2005.
For the most part, that didn't work because federal judges declined to hear the cases. Some judges ruled that the PREP Act was not intended to shield medical providers from negligence caused by inaction, such as failing to protect patients from the coronavirus. These rulings and appeals sent cases back to state courts, often after long delays that left families in legal limbo.
"Different judges take different views," said Joseph Ciaccio, a New York lawyer who has filed hundreds of such cases. "It's been very mixed." Yet the home has won court pauses in at least three negligence lawsuits as it appeals lower-court rulings denying immunity under the federal PREP Act, court records show. The operators of the home could not be reached for comment. In court filings, they denied any wrongdoing.at Healthcare at Foster Creek, calling the Portland nursing home "a serious danger to the public health and safety.
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