San Mateo Nursing Home Wrongful Death Lawyer

For families in San Mateo, the decision to place a loved one in a skilled nursing facility is made with the expectation of safety, dignity, and professional care. When that sacred trust is violated, and negligence directly leads to a resident's death, the facility must face serious legal consequences. A preventable death is a wrongful death, and it is a failure of the highest order under California law.

At the Nursing Home Law Group, we channel the anger and grief of our clients into decisive action. Our firm has spent more than 20 years representing families affected by elder abuse and neglect. Our award-winning lawyers understand the profound sense of loss and betrayal you are experiencing. We ensure every client receives personal attention as we aggressively pursue accountability against negligent corporate nursing home operators.

California law places an affirmative and continuous duty of care on all nursing facilities. This duty is not passive; it requires proactive measures to protect residents from foreseeable harm. Two core components of this duty that, when violated, often lead to preventable death are:

1. Comprehensive Resident Assessment: Facilities must accurately identify all risks a resident faces, including mobility impairment, cognitive decline, nutritional needs, and susceptibility to infection.
2. Strict Adherence to the Care Plan: The care plan is the facility’s legally mandated roadmap to safety. When staff deviates from or ignores critical instructions - such as scheduled repositioning to prevent bedsores, specific dietary instructions, or required assistance during transfers - it is a breach of duty.

The difference between life and death for a frail resident often lies in the facility’s diligence in executing this basic duty.

Negligence manifests in specific, life-threatening scenarios that are easily identified by an experienced San Mateo nursing home wrongful death lawyer. These failures demonstrate a systemic breakdown in patient safety:

• Fatal Pressure Ulcers and Sepsis: Neglect in turning immobile residents every two hours, often caused by chronic understaffing, allows minor skin irritations to evolve into deep, infected pressure ulcers (bedsores). Once these wounds become Stage IV, they can easily introduce bacteria into the bloodstream, leading to sepsis, a condition that rapidly overwhelms an elderly person’s immune system and causes death. This is almost always a textbook case of gross neglect.
• Aspiration and Choking Incidents: For residents with documented swallowing difficulties (dysphagia), staff have a duty to prepare specific, texture-modified meals and supervise consumption. A staff member’s momentary carelessness—giving solid food to a puréed diet patient, or leaving an impaired resident unattended—can result in fatal choking, which is entirely preventable through proper protocol adherence.
• Deterioration from Undetected Infections: Nursing home staff are the first line of defense against illness. Failure to monitor vital signs or recognize subtle changes in behavior (e.g., confusion or lethargy) can delay diagnosis of a common Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). If delayed, the infection can spread, leading to kidney damage and fatal sepsis or septic shock. Similarly, untreated fluid in the lungs can quickly progress to lethal pneumonia.
• Fatal Complications from Falls: Falls are a leading cause of death in nursing homes. When a fall results from staff failing to apply restraints (like bed alarms) or failing to answer call lights, causing the resident to attempt moving alone, the subsequent injuries (e.g., fatal head trauma or complex fractures) are a direct result of the facility’s negligence.

Why do these preventable deaths happen in San Mateo? The root cause is rarely the individual worker, but rather the corporate policies that incentivize cost-cutting over care quality.

• Systemic Understaffing: This is the most prevalent form of institutional neglect. When a facility operates with too few nurses and aides, vital tasks like repositioning, hygiene, and monitoring fluids are delayed or skipped entirely. Staff cannot be in three places at once, and the residents suffer the fatal consequences.
• Ignoring Risk Assessments: Assessments indicating a high risk of wandering, falling, or pressure ulcers are sometimes ignored or not communicated between shifts, rendering the Care Plan useless.
• Poor Training and Supervision: Staff may not be adequately trained to handle specialized needs, such as diabetic care, wound care, or recognizing signs of aspiration, leading to critical errors.

A crucial California Appellate Court case established that when a facility attempts to hide evidence of neglect or abuse through record manipulation, it may face enhanced penalties. Our role as your San Mateo nursing home wrongful death lawyer is to expose these internal failures and use the law to demand punitive justice.

The Nursing Home Law Group offers compassionate yet aggressive legal support. We investigate all allegations of neglect or abuse, secure essential staffing and medical records, and build a case focused on demonstrating the facility’s breach of duty.

We are committed to securing compensation for medical expenses, funeral costs, and the deep emotional losses suffered by the family, ensuring that the facility is held financially and legally accountable. Contact an experienced San Mateo nursing home wrongful death lawyer today for a confidential consultation.