If you have an elderly loved one in a nursing home, you have trusted that facility to provide care for and supervise your relative at all times. The term “elopement” applies to any situation in which a nursing home resident wanders away from the facility. This can be incredibly dangerous, and if this has happened to your loved one, you need to speak with a skilled Georgia nursing home elopement lawyer as swiftly as possible.
Pleasant Law, PLLC, has years of professional experience handling a wide range of nursing home-related legal cases, including abuse, neglect, elopement, and more. When you choose our firm to represent you and your family in a nursing home elopement claim, trust us to help you establish liability for any harm your loved one suffered and to hold the nursing home accountable for their negligence.
If you believe a nursing home has been negligent in the care of your loved one and allowed an elopement incident to occur, you can hold them accountable for any resulting damages. Success with your case may not only yield compensation for your family’s losses and the victim’s damaging experience but also potentially prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
Our team is ready to work with you through every stage of your case, from gathering the evidence necessary to prove why the elopement incident occurred to identifying all the damages you are eligible to claim from the defendant. Any type of wandering incident can be incredibly damaging, and our goal is to help you and your family recover as fully as possible.
Many nursing home residents throughout the state struggle with medical conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and other conditions that affect memory. They can become confused, forgetful, and disoriented easily, sometimes without warning. When a nursing home has patients with these conditions, it is the nursing home’s responsibility to ensure these patients do not endanger themselves and they must get proper nursing home facilities.
Elopement most often occurs due to a lack of supervision or general negligence. Staff may not be paying attention to a particular resident who needs extra care, or they may confuse daily duties, and scheduling errors could mean that a particular resident is left unattended. It is also possible for an elopement incident to happen during a day trip outside of the nursing home, during which the residents should have been carefully supervised.
In order to succeed with any personal injury claim in Georgia, the plaintiff must identify the party responsible for causing the damages cited in the claim, prove the full extent of those damages, and then prove that they resulted solely from the defendant’s actions. The average person would likely struggle to build this type of case successfully, so it is important for them to work with a Georgia nursing home elopement lawyer to build a cohesive claim.
Elopement is dangerous for several reasons. Generally, the longer the resident wanders, the more likely they are to suffer serious injuries. They could slip and fall and suffer physical harm, and it may take time for the nursing home staff to locate them and provide aid. They could also miss important medication doses and other treatments, and this can be very dangerous for some nursing home residents.
An elopement incident can also cause psychological distress. If a nursing home resident wanders and becomes lost, they may end up wandering even farther from the facility and their caregivers, increasing the risk of harm the farther they go. If an elopement incident occurred because of a nursing home’s negligence, your Georgia nursing home elopement lawyer can help you identify all of the resulting damages and hold the nursing home appropriately accountable.
In a personal injury case, the plaintiff has the right to seek compensation for any economic losses they suffered because of the defendant’s negligence or misconduct:
In addition to economic losses, a plaintiff is also able to seek compensation for their pain and suffering. State law only limits this aspect of recovery in some personal injury cases. In most cases, a plaintiff may claim whatever amount they deem to be reasonable to reflect the scope and severity of the harm they suffered.
An elopement incident may not only result in serious physical harm but also psychological distress for the victim. If this applies to your case, you have the right to seek compensation for pain and suffering. Your Georgia nursing home elopement lawyer can help you determine a suitable figure that reflects the overall severity of the incident, maximizing your case award as much as state law allows.
Your Georgia nursing home elopement lawyer can not only help you with proving liability for your loved one’s elopement incident but also accurately assess the full scope of the damages you could potentially recover if you succeed with your claim. A successful case can yield valuable compensation, provide a sense of closure, and ensure accountability for the negligence that harmed your loved one.
When a defendant in a personal injury case has broken the law in causing harm to a plaintiff, they not only face civil liability for the damages they inflicted but also criminal penalties and punitive damages. These damages are awarded at the court’s discretion and are separate from the damages claimed by the plaintiff. The amount the defendant pays in punitive damages typically depends on the severity of their actions and the scope of harm caused.
Your Georgia nursing home elopement lawyer can help you understand whether punitive damages or restitution could come into play in your case and what effects a criminal case against the defendant may have on your family’s recovery efforts. When a nursing home is held liable for the actions of its employees, it could face not only punitive damages but also fines and other penalties assessed by various government oversight agencies.
It is crucial to have legal counsel you trust on your side for any type of nursing home abuse or neglect case in Georgia, including any case pertaining to an elopement incident. The average person would likely struggle to obtain the evidence they will need to prove liability for the incident and to prove the full scope of their claimable damages.
When your family chooses Pleasant Law, PLLC, to represent your nursing home elopement claim, you will have a dedicated legal advocate ready to provide compassionate support through all stages of your case until you reach the results you hope to see. Our firm has successfully handled many nursing home cases that other attorneys will not touch due to the inherent challenges these cases often present.
Your loved one’s elopement incident may have revealed a pattern of unacceptable practices from a nursing home, and effective legal action can hold them accountable as well as potentially prevent future elopement incidents from occurring.
We can assist you in gathering evidence to prove liability for your loved one’s elopement incident and help you show the full extent of the harm the defendant caused with their negligence. Our goal in every nursing home elopement case we accept is to not only maximize our client’s recovery as much as possible but also to do everything we can to prevent others from facing similar harm in the future.
Pleasant Law, PLLC, offers free initial consultations to prospective new clients. If you are unsure whether you have grounds to file a claim, you can meet with our team, tell us your story, and we can help you understand the next steps you will need to take to ensure accountability and compensation for your family’s damages.
You have a limited time to file your case. You must not only meet the statute of limitations for personal injury claims, but you could also face time restrictions when it comes to gathering evidence to support your claim. For example, the witness testimony you could need will be most reliable if you secure it as quickly as possible after the incident.
Contact Pleasant Law, PLLC, today to schedule a free consultation with a Georgia nursing home elopement lawyer and learn more about the legal services we provide. We can listen to your story and explain how we can help your family recover from this incident.