Michigan Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect Lawyers

Our Michigan nursing home lawyers specialize in cases involving the abuse and neglect of residents. We have helped families and their loved ones in nursing home abuse cases throughout the State of Michigan since 1969. We have the skill, experience, and knowledge to win your case.

We understand that placing your family member in a Michigan nursing home or assisted living facility was one of the most difficult decisions you ever made. You trusted the safety of your loved one to the nursing care facility and expected the best possible care and supervision.

When an injury or unexpected death occurred, you rightfully felt angry and betrayed.

Michigan nursing home residents and their families have the legal right to pursue compensation under Michigan law. Contact a top-rated nursing home abuse attorney to find how you can get justice for a neglected or abused resident.

• Nursing home neglect injury statistics
• What is considered nursing home neglect?
• Examples of nursing home lawsuits
• Nursing home lawsuit settlement examples

Who are the Best Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers in Michigan?

Our legal team includes the most successful Michigan nursing home abuse attorneys. Buckfire Law Firm lawyers have won the top awards in the legal profession, including:

• U.S. News & World Report Best Law Firms
• “Best Michigan Personal Injury Attorney” by American Lawyer Academy
• Named Top 100 Trial Lawyers in Michigan
• Honored as “Super Lawyers”
• Top Martindale-Hubbell Rating (AV) for Skill & Integrity
• Member of Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum

Buckfire Law is a personal injury law firm with offices in Southfield, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Macomb County. Our attorneys sue nursing homes and assisted living facilities throughout Michigan, including Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Flint, Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Monroe and all other cities and counties.

If you or a loved one was injured in a nursing care facility, contact us so we can begin our nursing home neglect investigation of your case. We do not charge any fees unless you get a settlement and we pay all of the case expenses. If your case is unsuccessful for any reason, you owe us nothing.

What Are the Laws that Regulate Nursing Homes?

There are both federal and state laws that regulate nursing homes. They specify both the legal obligations of the senior living facility and the rights of patients.

Michigan Nursing Home Law

Michigan statute MCL 333.20201 sets forth the Patient Bill of Rights for nursing home residents. The statute provides many rights, including that all residents shall receive adequate and appropriate care, have the right to participate in medical decision-making, and the right to religious and civil liberties.

The law also requires that all residents have the right to be free of both mental and physical abuse.

Federal Nursing Home Law

In addition to Michigan nursing home laws, there are strict federal nursing home statutes that apply. Most important is that the senior living facility must:

• Maintain sufficient nursing staff to provide nursing and related services to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psycho-social well-being of each resident, as determined by resident assessments and individual plans of care
• Ensure that the medical care of each resident is supervised by a physician and must provide or arrange for the provision of physician services 24 hours a day, in case of an emergency

What Constitutes Abuse in a Skilled Nursing Facility?

Nursing home abuse is when an intentional act by a caregiver that causes harm to the resident. This could be physical harm, unreasonable confinement or restraint, intimidation, or the causing of mental anguish by a caregiver. The abuse can be either a physical injury or psychological damage to the resident and can be caused by a facility staff member and even another resident.

The pie chart above shows the different levels of nursing home abuse types that elders have complained about, according to the National Center for Victims of Crime. Physical abuse and resident-on-resident abuse is responsible for nearly half of all complaints.

• Physical abuse: 27.4%
• Resident-on-resident abuse (physical or sexual): 22.1%
• Psychological abuse: 19.4%
• Gross neglect: 15.3%
• Financial exploitation: 7.9%
• Sexual abuse: 7.9%

Signs of Nursing Home Abuse – How to Recognize It

• Physical Abuse: Unexplained bruises, cuts, or broken bones, broken eyeglasses, failing to take medications properly, or signs of restraint.
• Emotional Abuse: Sudden withdrawal, depression, or signs of fear around staff.
• Financial Abuse: Unexplained withdrawals from bank accounts, changes to legal documents, missing cash, or changes in the financial situation.

What is Considered Elder Neglect?

Nursing home neglect (or negligence) is a frequent problem in facilities. Many times, it is undetected because the resident is completely unable to recognize or describe the poor treatment to family members. Roommates and other residents may witness the neglect but not be able to communicate either.

The legal term “negligence” means what a reasonable person, or nursing home, would do in the same or similar circumstances with respect to a patient.

Nursing home negligence occurs when the facility and staff fail to provide the required medical care and treatment for a resident. This includes the failure to develop and implement required care plans, making medication errors and mistakes, and not properly monitoring the residents in their rooms and in common areas.

Unfortunately, most nursing homes and their staff members will not admit to their mistakes that harm residents. Many times, they will even try to hide a bedsore to conceal an injury from family members. Also, they rarely complete an incident report to document the accident or injury.

Is there a Difference between Neglect and Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice occurs when a licensed medical provider is negligent in the care of a patient. This can often include neglect, like failing to order a test or prescribe proper medications.

In Michigan, most claims filed against medical providers, including nursing homes, are a form of medical malpractice lawsuit. The same legal requirements apply to both cases. Similarly, the caps on damages also apply to both cases.

However, there are cases where the neglect is actually ordinary negligence and not malpractice. This includes if an injury occurs in an unlicensed nursing facility or assisted living facility.

Another example is when the negligent staff member was an unlicensed nurse’s aide or other employees. Finally, if the injury was caused by a non-medical type act, such as leaving a door unlocked so a resident could wander from the facility or spilling hot coffee on a resident.

When an injury is caused by ordinary negligence, the caps on damages do not apply. In those lawsuits, the settlements and verdicts are often much higher.

Nursing Home Injury Statistics

According to the CDC Data on nursing home care, there are over 15,000 nursing homes in the United States and the number is rising in every state. There are over 1.5 million beds in these facilities and the majority of the residents are over the age of 65.

In Michigan, there are over 444 licensed nursing homes and even more licensed and unlicensed assisted living facilities. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that only one in three Michigan nursing homes had an above-average rating in health inspections.

The bar chart above shows the number of deficiencies by severity level in the state of Michigan. The graph shows that thousands of deficiencies result in all types of actual and potential harm. Hundreds of residents suffer actual and serious harm every year from nursing home abuse and a large number of violations are issued by the state investigators.

Which Michigan Nursing Homes have the Most Violations?

According to Nursing Home Inspect, 124 of the 444 Michigan facilities were determined to have serious deficiencies and were assessed penalties of more than $13 million last year.

The homes with the most violations of neglect and abuse last year according to Nursing Home Inspect are:

• Medilodge of Southfield: 112
• Medilodge of Farmington: 105
• The Lighthouse at Ishpeming: 98
• Cambridge South: 95
• Medilodge of Grand Blanc: 91
• The Lodge at Taylor: 91
• Metron of Belding: 91
• Cambridge East: 91
• Spectrum Health Rehab: 88
• Laurels of Coldwater: 87

Many other nursing homes have dozens of violations for serious deficiencies that resulted in neglect, abuse, and injuries to residents and exposed others to potential harm.

How to Report Nursing Home Abuse & Elder Neglect in Michigan

You can file a complaint about nursing home neglect and abuse by another resident or by a nursing home employee with the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.

If the complaint warrants an investigation, the enforcement team will go to the facility and perform a detailed investigation. When concluded, you will be able to obtain the investigation report.

When Can You Sue a Nursing Home in Michigan?

You can sue a Michigan nursing home for negligence or abuse if it results in serious injury to the resident. To file a lawsuit, the injury must typically result in death or significant harm, like a fractured hip, brain bleed, or infected pressure ulcer. There must be an actual injury to a resident, rather than something that “could have happened” or “almost happened.”

There are two main reasons for filing a nursing home lawsuit.

• The first reason is to get compensation for the injured resident and family members caused by negligent care.
• The second reason to sue a nursing home is to prevent the same type of harm from happening to another nursing home patient in the future. This is the main objective for many of our clients because they do not want to see another resident or family experience their same type of grief and pain.

How Do You Prove a Nursing Home Lawsuit?

To prove a nursing home lawsuit in Michigan, you must prove that the:

• Care or treatment provided was below the acceptable standard of care for nursing home care. This means that the facility failed to provide the required treatment, care, and monitoring to the resident that would be expected in a licensed nursing care home.
• Negligence of the nursing home staff caused injury, harm, or death to the resident
• The resident (or estate) suffered quantifiable harm as a result of medical malpractice. This includes pain and suffering, disability, loss of income, loss of enjoyment of life, medical expenses, and other economic harm.

The nursing home will rarely if ever, admit that it provided substandard care to the resident. Our nursing home abuse attorneys hire expert witnesses, including nurses and physicians, to review the records and provide opinions on why the facility was negligent.

Our medical experts also provide opinions explaining how neglect and abuse caused injury to the resident. This testimony is a crucial part of winning a nursing home neglect lawsuit.

Examples of Nursing Home Lawsuits

A nursing home is liable for negligence by a doctor and nursing staff. There are many types of nursing home lawsuits that demand monetary compensation for the resident and family, including:

• Bedsores, pressure ulcers, and decubitus ulcers. These are caused by the failure of the staff to regularly re-position the resident, bathe the resident, and inspect the body for evidence of skin breakdown. Untreated bedsores can lead to sepsis and cause the death of the nursing home patient.
• Falls from beds, wheelchairs, and transfers. Falls resulting from nurses and aides not properly monitoring the resident or providing the required help with assistance during walking.
• Bed rail entrapment, where the nursing home patient gets trapped between the bed and the bed rail which can cause a strangulation death.
• Resident wandering and elopement from the facility not supervising the resident and have proper security alarms to notify the staff when a resident leaves the building.
• Infections resulting in sepsis and death because the doctors and nurses did not identify the condition and start treatment in a timely manner.
• Malnutrition & dehydration of residents due to poor feeding and dietary issues and the failure to recognize the symptoms before they warrant hospitalization.
• Fractured hips & broken bones from falls, drops, and improper transfers from a wheelchair to bed, wheelchair onto the toilet, or into a shower. These also happen because the resident was not provided the level of assistance needed by the staff member, like a two-person assist during a transfer.
• Medication mistakes & drug overdoses resulting in hospitalization, including giving a resident the wrong medication or improper dosage of the prescribed drug.
• Choking injuries & death from improper diets and failing to supervise a nursing home patient during meals. Mistakes include the nursing staff feeding the wrong food choice to a resident with a swallowing disorder or not modifying a diet when needed by changes in a resident’s condition. The dietary staff may also not follow speech and language therapy and physician recommendations and this can lead to serious harm.
• Sexual abuse & rape from staff members, visitors at the facility, and other residents. The home is liable for failing to protect the resident from sexual predators.
• Residents who are assaulted or beaten by other residents in the nursing home
• Wrongful death from falls, infections, choking, and poor medical management.

Our experienced team of nursing home abuse attorneys has successfully handled all of the above types of neglect and abuse. You need an experienced law firm on your side.

Who Can File a Nursing Home Lawsuit?

The nursing lawsuit can be filed by the resident if that person is legally competent. In most cases, it is a legal guardian, conservator, or family member that contacts our personal injury law firm on behalf of the resident to sue the nursing home. In cases involving death, the wrongful death lawsuit is filed by the personal representative of the estate appointed by a probate court judge.

How Do I File a Michigan Nursing Home Negligence Case?

The first step is to contact our experienced Michigan nursing home abuse lawyers to discuss the facts of your case. It is a free consultation. We will listen carefully to your story and determine if you have a case with merit. If we believe that your case is meritorious, we will begin our investigation immediately.

The next step is to get the complete resident chart from the facility. Our law firm will request and pay for the entire resident chart. Our team personally reviews every page of the records to determine if there is a viable case.

We also have the records reviewed by our nurse and physician experts to determine if negligence by the home or the staff caused serious injury to the resident.

We also get all hospital records for treatment that occurred after the incident or injury. Our nursing home attorneys carefully analyze the records to determine the type of harm caused by the neglect of the staff. We have over fifty years of experience in handling abuse and neglect cases.

If there was a State of Michigan investigation, we will get a copy of that report. For deaths that involved an autopsy, we will obtain the medical examiner’s report.

If our experts determine there is a valid case of neglect or abuse, we prepare a lawsuit and file it at the county courthouse. We then serve it on the facility to start the litigation process.

The lawsuit looks to hold the nursing home accountable for the injuries and harm to the resident. It demands money compensation for the loved one and family members.

In cases involving a nursing home resident’s death, our law firm will file a wrongful death lawsuit.

What Type of Compensation Can You Claim?

The Michigan law of damages provides for two types of monetary compensation in a lawsuit. These are known as non-economic and economic damages. Settlements include both types of damages.

Non-economic damages include settlement payouts for pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of companionship by family members, and scars and disfigurements.

Economic damages include payment of medical expenses and reimbursement of monies paid by Medicare or a health insurance carrier for injuries caused by nursing home neglect.

In the event of a death of a loved one, a wrongful death lawsuit demands compensation for the pain and suffering of the resident prior to passing away. The law also provides damages for the loss of society and companionship of the surviving family members. In addition, the settlement also requests the reimbursement of funeral and burial expenses.

How Much are Michigan Nursing Home Lawsuit Settlements?

Nursing home abuse settlements are very substantial and are based upon the harm caused to the resident. There is no “average” or “typical” settlement amount and there is no settlement calculator. The compensation amount awarded is determined by the skill and experience of your lawyer.

The Buckfire Law Firm has won many Michigan nursing home abuse settlements and jury verdicts. Examples of our case settlements include:

• $5,000,000 verdict in a Southfield assisted living wrongful death lawsuit in the Oakland County Circuit Court.
• $3,650,000 settlement for an assisted living home death case.
• $600,000 settlement in a case we sued a Detroit area nursing home for a fatal fall in a van.
• $565,000 settlement for a Northern Michigan nursing home fall injury.
• $470,000 settlement due to a fall from a Hoyer lift during a transfer.
• $400,000 settlement for a Macomb County facility for a resident sexual assault
• $300,000 settlement for an unsupervised resident who died from choking on a sandwich
• $290,000 settlement for a Battle Creek area assisted living fall death lawsuit.
• $285,000 for a Grand Rapids patient with a Stage 4 decubitus ulcer and other pressure sores.
• $275,000 settlement in a Detroit nursing home neglect case for multiple bedsores.
• $250,000 for a Genesee County nursing home patient who required a skin graft from a decubitus ulcer.
• $250,000 settlement for an Ann Arbor resident with a fractured hip when dropped by a nurse.
• $250,000 pre-suit settlement for a fall that resulted in subdural brain bleed and death near Saginaw.
• $200,000 settlement for a Wayne County adult foster care (AFC Home) resident with burn injuries.
• $175,000 settlement for a Stage IV pressure ulcer in a Rochester skilled nursing facility.

Nursing Home Abuse Case Study

A nursing home negligence lawsuit was filed against a Macomb County nursing home by the family of a resident. The resident was a stroke victim and required a special soft diet due to swallowing problems caused by the stroke. While in the dining room, he was served a dinner with a large meatball. He choked on the food and later died.

A wrongful death lawsuit was filed alleging negligence for serving the resident with food that was difficult to swallow and improper staff supervision during mealtime. The nursing disputed the claims and the matter went to trial. The jury awarded the family $2,350,000.

How Long Does it Take to Settle a Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect Case?

The actual lawsuit can take one to two years to complete from the time the Complaint is filed at the court until either the trial or settlement. However, the process often takes longer due to the many legal requirements that must be met before the case can even be filed.

We have settled a large number of cases with the insurance company even before a lawsuit is filed. This happens when liability is very clear and the insurer would rather pay the claim than incur the expense of litigation when it is clear a settlement will be paid at a later date. We will make every effort to settle your case before going to court.

How Long Do I Have to File a Michigan Nursing Home Abuse Lawsuit?

In Michigan, you must generally file a nursing home lawsuit is generally two years from the date of injury. The deadline is the same for cases against assisted living facilities. This is referred to as the “statute of limitations” and is strictly followed by the courts.

In cases involving the death of the resident, the time deadline can often be extended beyond two years and even up to five years under certain circumstances.

To avoid missing any deadlines, you should contact our nursing home abuse attorneys immediately so we can start our investigation of your case.

How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Nursing Home Abuse Attorney?

It does not cost anything to hire our nursing home lawyers. We do not charge any fees to start your case and only get paid when you receive your settlement check.

We also pay all of the case costs for you and get a percentage of the settlement at the very end of the case. There are no legal fees if there is no settlement.

Get Help from our Nursing Home Negligence Lawyers

Call our experienced nursing home lawyers to get started on your case. It is always a free consultation.

We will listen to your complaints and then let you know if you have a case for filing a nursing home abuse lawsuit.

If you do have a case that we can pursue, we will order all of the medical records and start with our investigation immediately.

There is no cost to get started and never a legal fee unless you receive a settlement. We even pay the case expenses.

Contact a nursing home abuse lawyer now to get started on your case!

Michigan Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect Resources

• ProPublica
• National Council on Aging
• Medicare Nursing Home Compare

Legally reviewed by:

Lawrence J. Buckfire, J.D., Lead Trial Attorney at Buckfire Law
Lawrence J. Buckfire, J.D. has over 30 years of experience specializing in personal injury and wrongful death cases. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and attended Wayne State University School of Law. Lawrence has been named a Super Lawyer, U.S. News Best Lawyer, and in The National Trial Lawyers-Top 100 Trial Lawyers.
Date of Review: Nov., 2024