Sonoma County Nursing Home Wrongful Death Lawyer

The trust you place in a Sonoma County nursing facility to care for your elderly loved one is sacred. When that trust is shattered by fatal neglect or abuse, the resulting pain and anger can be overwhelming. Losing a family member is devastating, but realizing their death could have been prevented due to negligence is an injustice that demands legal action. Under California law, negligent nursing homes must be held accountable for the wrongful death of a resident.

The Nursing Home Law Group has been dedicated to representing individuals and families impacted by elder abuse and neglect for more than 20 years. Our award-winning legal team understands the complicated emotions - the grief, anger, and mourning - that you are experiencing. We provide the personal attention and aggressive representation needed to investigate your case and seek the justice your loved one deserves from the responsible facility.

Nursing homes in California have a non-negotiable legal duty of care to their residents. This duty goes beyond providing food and shelter; it mandates a proactive, professional level of medical and personal care. The facility must:

1. Properly Assess Residents
2. Develop and Follow Care Plans
3. Ensure Adequate Staffing

When a facility in Sonoma County breaches this duty, leading directly to a resident’s demise, that breach constitutes fatal neglect, and the facility is liable for wrongful death.

• Falls and Traumatic Injuries: The failure to properly assess and mitigate fall risks is a severe form of negligence. Staff failure to use bed alarms, provide required physical assistance, or respond quickly to a call light can lead to a fall, resulting in a fatal subdural hematoma or hip fracture.
• Undiagnosed and Untreated Infections: Staff must be vigilant in monitoring residents. A simple, easily treatable Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) can escalate into sepsis—a life-threatening blood infection - if not diagnosed and treated quickly. Similarly, neglecting residents with impaired mobility can lead to aspiration pneumonia or rapid deterioration from infectious illnesses.
• Choking Incidents (Aspiration): Residents diagnosed with dysphagia (swallowing impairment) require modified diets (puréed or thickened liquids) and often one-on-one supervision during meals. A staff member's failure to check the care plan, provide the correct food consistency, or supervise the resident can result in a fatal choking incident.
• Severe Pressure Ulcers (Bedsores): Stage III or Stage IV pressure ulcers are nearly always evidence of neglect. These deep wounds result from a failure to turn and reposition immobile residents every two hours, as required.
• Dehydration and Malnutrition: Chronic understaffing or inattention can prevent staff from consistently assisting residents who cannot feed themselves or reach water. Severe dehydration and malnutrition compromise the body’s defenses, making the resident susceptible to fatal infections and organ failure.
• Medication and Dosage Errors: Careless administration of prescription drugs, whether giving the wrong medication, the wrong dose, or skipping necessary doses, can have toxic or lethal effects on a frail elderly body.

Fatal neglect is rarely a single isolated incident; it is usually rooted in systemic problems driven by profit. A dedicated Sonoma County nursing home wrongful death lawyer knows exactly where to look for these root causes:

1. Profit-Driven Understaffing: The facility keeps staffing levels dangerously low to maximize profits, making it physically impossible for the remaining CNAs and nurses to provide quality care to all residents.
2. Inadequate Training and Supervision: Poorly trained or unsupervised staff members miss critical symptoms of decline (like fever, confusion, or wound changes) or fail to implement the established safety protocols for high-risk residents.
3. Falsification of Records: To cover up negligence, facilities sometimes encourage or require staff to document care—such as turning, repositioning, or monitoring vital signs—that was never actually provided.

In California, courts consistently uphold that a facility's adherence to professional standards is paramount. For example, documented cases involving a facility's failure to monitor and track fluid intake for a dehydrated resident who subsequently died confirm that neglect of the basic duty of care is grounds for a wrongful death lawsuit.

If you have lost a loved one in a Sonoma County facility due to what you believe was neglect, the time to act is now. The Nursing Home Law Group is prepared to immediately launch an investigation, preserving critical evidence like medical charts, staffing records, and incident reports.

We understand that you are angry and mourning. Let our experienced, award-winning lawyers take on the legal fight. We seek not only compensation for funeral costs, medical expenses, and pain and suffering but also justice that forces negligent facilities to change their practices.