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 Drury,
Romano, Klecan achieve favorable settlement in suit stemming from a
wrongful death claim
A $1.5 million claim settles
for $20,000
On June 30, 2008, RCDM
trial lawyers Bill Drury,
Carol Romano and
Jack Klecan helped to
negotiate a $20,000 settlement of a $1.5 million claim
stemming from a wrongful death and elder abuse action.
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See Bill Drury's 10-Year
Defense Trial Overview
The original suit was
brought by the family of Kaye York against Life Care Centers of America, d/b/a Life Care
Center of Paradise Valley. Ms. York suffered from
severe hypoglycemia. Plaintiffs alleged that, over a three-month
period, Life Care’s nursing staff breached the standard of care
in a number of ways, including failure to properly monitor and
treat Ms. York’s condition, causing Ms. York’s death.
Dedicated Health
Professionals is a nursing registry/agency that provided
temporary nursing staff to Life Care. When Life Care was sued by
Ms. York’s family, Life Care in turn sued Dedicated Health
Professionals. On the eve of trial, the York family settled with
Life Care for $1.5 million, and Life Care proceeded against
Dedicated, seeking full reimbursement for the amount that Life
Care paid to plain-tiffs.
Although Ms. York was a
resident at Life Care for three months, Dedicated provided a
nurse only on the night Ms. York died. Life Care alleged that
the Dedicated nurse was not properly qualified, evidenced by his
failure to test Ms. York’s blood sugar levels. Life Care alleged
that, had he tested her blood sugar levels, he would have found
that they were dangerously low and could have alerted her
physician. Dedicated argued that Life Care did not present
sufficient expert testimony to show that its nurse was not
properly qualified and that he should have performed such
testing or that the failure to perform glucose testing was
causally related to Ms. York’s death.
At the close of Life
Care’s case, Dedicated moved for a directed verdict. Initially
the judge granted the motion, at least in part, but allowed Life
Care to reopen its case. Knowing this would be futile, Life Care
accepted a $20,000 pretrial offer made by Dedicated. |
