COLUMBIA — Healthcare companies and a nursing center appealed a court decision requiring them to pay out millions in a wrongful death lawsuit.
Jean Watkins, representing her late mother, Mildred Watkins, filed wrongful death and survival actions against Sterling Healthcare, Countrywood Nursing Center and Guardian Resources following her mother’s death during her stay at Countrywood in Hopkins in 2011.
The circuit court that handed down that initial decision called the case “the most egregious case of elder neglect/abuse” it had ever witnessed. SC appeals court judges John Geathers, Blake Hewitt and Kristi Curtis found that determination “well supported by the record” in their September ruling, but they did poke some holes in that lower court’s judgment, reducing the damages the medical provider must pay from nearly $30 million to nearly $24 million…