A Hilton Head Island nursing home will pay a $400,000 settlement to the wife of a deceased patient after she sued the facility in 2022, claiming the staff’s negligence — and a mistake in medication dosage — led to her husband’s death.
Attorneys for the Life Care Center of Hilton Head agreed to the settlement but denied any wrongdoing in the patient’s death, according to a settlement approval document filed March 11 in Beaufort County court. The sum included just around $125,000 in attorney and litigation fees.
Mary Roerty filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the nursing home in September 2022 after her husband, Gerard Roerty, died at age 77 at the Hilton Head Hospital on Aug. 15, 2020. He had been admitted to the Life Care Center in late July after he contracted sepsis from a urinary tract infection but was transferred to the hospital two days before his death “due to a change in his condition and medical decline,” according to the court summons .
During Gerard Roerty’s stay at the Life Care Center, the lawsuit alleged, he was given 90 milligrams of fluoxetine daily instead of weekly as prescribed. The high dosage interacted with his heart medication and caused “an overdose of medication,” according to an affidavit signed by registered nurse Luanna Trahant that was filed alongside the lawsuit…