Recent Minnesota nursing home injuries – some involving nursing home abuse and others involving Salmonella poisoning – illustrate why nursing homes and those serving nursing homes should be held to a higher standard.
Today, two teenagers accused of abusing nursing home residents made their first court appearance in Albert Lea, Minnesota. The teens were alleged to have physically and sexually abused nursing home residents at the Good Samaritan Society home in early 2008. At the court appearance, bail was set at $6,000.00, and it appears both teens will be released pending trial.
This bail hearing falls in the midst of a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that has hit nursing homes and other residential care facilities particularly hard. The Salmonella outbreak has now been linked to peanut butter and was first discovered because the contaminated peanut butter was being sold in bulk to nursing homes. These nursing homes were unwittingly serving the Salmonella-laced peanut butter to those most susceptible to infection – elderly nursing home residents.
At least two Minnesota deaths have resulted from the Salmonella poisoning and our firm will be filing suit on behalf of one of the families this week.
This lawsuit against the producer of the peanut butter and the nursing home abuse lawsuits that are frequently filed, help push the system to add protections for our society’s most vulnerable.
As Minnesota native Hubert H. Humphrey famously pointed out:
“…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
The accountability achieved through litigation combined with the publicity surrounding the nursing home abuse case in Minnesota and the Salmonella peanut butter outbreak promise to make nursing home safety a higher priority as Humphrey envisioned.
