CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – A jury awarded a family a total of $2 million after their mother died of sepsis due to lack of treatment at a Fairview Park nursing home.
The jury awarded $1.5 million in pain and suffering and an additional $500,000 for O’Neill Healthcare-Fairview Park’s violations of Ohio’s Nursing Home Residents’ Bill of Rights Act.
According to a news release from Thomas Law Offices, who represented the family:
- In October 2020, Milka Simonoski entered O’Neill Healthcare-Fairview Park after a 2011 brain injury left her unable to speak and wheelchair bound.
- Between September 2021 and November 2022, Simonoski lost a quarter of her body weight.
- On Nov. 17, 2022, Simonoski developed a urinary tract infection and the nursing home did not tell her family members.
- On Nov. 22, 2022, Simonoski was “agitated, inconsolable, and tried to climb out of her bed.”
- On Nov. 23, 2022, when she was sent to the Cleveland Clinic Fairview Hospital she was in septic shock. Simonoski died six days later.
“Ohio’s Nursing Home Residents’ Bill of Rights Act exists to protect people like Milka, residents who can’t advocate for themselves and are entirely dependent on the facilities that take them in,” said Tad Thomas, founder of Thomas Law Offices. “Among the most basic of those rights is the right to have your family informed when something is wrong. When a facility ignores that obligation, families have to be able to hold them accountable in a courtroom.”…