You thought they would take good care of your loved ones, but it didn’t happen. They’ve just been neglecting them.
Nursing home neglect is more common than you think. An estimated 5 million seniors suffer from abuse every year.
When your loved ones suffer from this abuse, how do you prove it in court? This post will help explain what you need.
Keep reading to learn what you need to prove in nursing home negligence cases.
Duty of Care
The first thing to establish is that a nursing home had a duty to care for your loved one. This link should be easy to prove.
When you send the elderly to a nursing home, there is a contractual agreement formed. This agreement can be used to prove that the nursing home was required to care for your loved one.
Breach of Duty
There is a standard of care that nursing homes are required to keep. You must be able to prove that the nursing home failed to meet these standards.
In these cases, a good idea is to bring in experts that can testify to the standard of care that should be received. If you have witnesses that can verify the treatment that was happening, then you can prove that the nursing home wasn’t doing everything that they should have been doing.
In other cases, this can be because of a mistake. These may not be as difficult to prove because of the medical conditions that arise from these mistakes. You may see malnutrition, infections, or other medical problems as a result.
Causation
You need to establish a direct link that the care provided by the nursing home caused the damage.
This means if you can show that a failure to perform a duty is what caused harm to your loved one, then you can file suit for failure to provide care.
Damages
If a neglect victim hasn’t suffered damages, then it can be hard to bring a lawsuit. Being displeased with the way someone administers treatment isn’t enough.
You can include both economic and non-economic damages in your evidence.
Economic damages include any medical treatment that is needed because of neglect. These damages can be anything from hospital bills to therapy needed after everything is over.
You can claim pain and suffer for non-economic damages. If you can prove that there was pain or emotional problems because of neglect, then you have a case.
Getting Help
If you are struggling to prove neglect, then bringing in a good lawyer can help you in this process.
Places like the Law Office of William W. Hurst can help!
Don’t Let Nursing Home Neglect Go Unanswered
If we continue letting nursing home neglect go unpunished, it’s only going to keep happening. Make sure you get everything you need to pursue your case. When you have the facts, you’re going to increase your chance of winning significantly.
Are you taking care of your loved ones while getting things sorted out? Read our guide to bringing joy to seniors so you can help them recover from what happened.