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The verdict is the largest against a nursing home in Florida history. Nursing home giant Extendicare Inc. plans to appeal.
By MIKE BRASSFIELD
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 28, 2000
LARGO -- The family of Charles McCorkle Jr. painted a vivid picture.
They told a jury that a giant, greedy nursing home corporation didn't have enough staffers at its home in Kenneth City, so McCorkle was left helpless, hungry and dehydrated, with bedsores that cut to the bone.
On Wednesday, Pinellas County jurors returned the largest verdict against a nursing home in Florida history.
They decided that the nursing home's parent company should pay McCorkle's survivors $17-million in punitive damages on top of nearly $3-million in compensation that the jury awarded to the family Tuesday.
Nursing home giant Extendicare Inc. plans to appeal.
In Florida, where nursing homes are three times as likely to be sued as other states, the whopping $20-million verdict reignited a debate: Are all these lawsuits going to drive homes out of business or force them to improve? Should the state make it harder to sue nursing homes?
McCorkle, a retired Georgia truck driver, was found to have Alzheimer's-related dementia at age 65. In June 1997, his aunt put him in a Pinellas County assisted living facility, where he fell and suffered a head injury. He could no longer speak.
He was put in the Colonial Care Center, at 6300 46th Ave. N, for rehabilitation. His aunt moved him out in May 1998, and he died that August.
His aunt, Marie Weldon, alleged that McCorkle's health spiraled downward during his nine months at Colonial Care. Weldon sued Extendicare Inc., a Milwaukee-based company that owned Colonial at the time. It owns nearly 300 nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The company said McCorkle was in extremely poor health when he arrived at the home and that the best care available couldn't have saved him.
But the lawsuit's central argument was that Colonial Care was understaffed.
Weldon's attorney, Bennie Lazzara Jr., told jurors that the home didn't have enough nursing assistants to feed McCorkle, give him water or keep him from getting bedsores. McCorkle rapidly lost weight and was left to lie in his own waste, Lazzara said.
"Short staffing was the key issue," Lazzara said after the jury reached a verdict Wednesday. "This jury determined that this corporation set a policy of understaffing these facilities, and they didn't want that to go on.
"It's a simple proposition: You have to have enough people there, and they have to have enough time to do what they need to do."
Extendicare says it is confident that a state appeals court will throw out the jury's findings and the $20-million in damages.
Just last week, Extendicare sold Colonial and 14 other Florida nursing homes for $60-million.
"The atmosphere in Florida was an extremely difficult one in which to operate" because of lawsuits and rising insurance costs, said company spokesman Michael Mervis.
The nursing home industry wants Florida to make it harder to sue homes over bad care. An industry study found that Florida nursing homes are sued three times as often than the national average and pay more than twice the national average to defend and settle lawsuits.
The industry is raising the specter of mass nursing home closings as homes are no longer able to afford insurance.
"You cannot continue to sue and sue and sue and expect nursing homes to be around tomorrow," said Ed Towey, who heads the industry's association in Tallahassee.
Trial lawyers scoff. "They're always saying that," Lazzara said.
Trial lawyers say big verdicts send a message that poor care is unacceptable. They also say nursing home companies make plenty of money. "If they'd put a small percentage of that back into staffing ... ," Lazzara said. "They never want to listen."
Wednesday's verdict beat the previous record in Florida. Last year, Tampa lawyer Jim Wilkes won a judgment of $15.2-million for the estate of a man who fell 30 times at a Tampa nursing home, developed pressure ulcers, went into shock because of infection and died of emaciation and malnutrition.
Also last year, a Citrus County jury awarded $20-million to a woman who lost most of her right leg when a 1-centimeter toe infection spread out of control at a Citrus nursing home. The verdict was actually only $10-million because the jury found that two doctors were half liable for the medical outcome, and the doctors weren't being sued.
- Times staff writer Stephen Nohlgren contributed to this report.