Illinois Appellate Court Holds That Jury Was Wrong in Choosing Not to Award Loss of Society in Death Case - Watson v. South Shore Nursing & Rehab
In order to file a civil lawsuit, you need to have some concrete damages, such as medical bills, lost time from work, or property damage. However, oftentimes a party might also be seeking some non-concrete damages, such as loss of normal life, pain and suffering, or loss of society. The cost of these non-concrete damages is more subjective and therefore harder for the jury to quantify. However, the difficulty in determining the cost of these damages should not preclude a jury from awarding them.
In the Illinois wrongful death lawsuit of Estate of William Sloan, deceased v. South Shore Nursing & Rehabilitation Center LLC, et al. 09 L 14819, the trial jury elected not to award any damages for the plaintiffs' loss of society. As a result, the plaintiffs appealed the jury verdict for its exclusion of the plaintiffs' loss of society claim on the basis that the plaintiffs themselves had also suffered as a result of the decedent's death.
The original lawsuit was filed after William Sloan, a resident at South Shore Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, lit himself on fire after being left unsupervised in his room. Sloan had been trying to light a cigarette, but ended up setting himself on fire and suffering from first, second, and third degree burns. Those burns left Sloan susceptible to developing an infection, which in turn led to his death.
Sloan's daughters brought a wrongful death claim against the nursing home for its negligence in leaving Sloan unsupervised with smoking materials. The claim was brought under the Illinois Nursing Home Act and alleged that South Shore was responsible for Sloan's death. The Illinois jury entered a $1.65 million verdict against South Shore, which included damages for Sloan's medical expenses, his pain and suffering, disfigurement from the fire, and for his loss of normal life. However, the verdict failed to include any damages for the loss of society his daughters suffered upon his death.
In the recent case of 
Richard Schrik had been living at the Howe Development Center, a nursing residence run and operated by the State of Illinois for residents with developmental disabilities. Schrik had severe mental retardation and had been diagnosed with the mental abilities of a three or four year-old. He had been living in state institutions since 1977.
However, a 
One of these provisions under the new Illinois nursing home law requires additional screening of incoming nursing home residents, including criminal background checks and psychological background checks. In Illinois many nursing home residents are not actually physically impaired, but were being placed in nursing home facilities instead of a long home mental institution. The new law attempts to relocate many of the mentally ill patients currently residing in Illinois nursing homes in an effort to diminish overcrowding and its potential for nursing 
The trial court upheld the defendant's right to arbitrate and denied plaintiff's request for a jury trial. This arbitration clause issue was recently ruled on by the Illinois Supreme Court in 
Vincent was brought on behalf of decedent Marjorie Vincent, alleging that defendant nursing home Alden-Park Strathmoor, Inc. caused personal injuries to decedent prior to her death while in defendant's care. Under Count III of Plaintiff's Complaint, the estate sought to reserve the right to seek punitive damages under a survival action in the Nursing Home Care Act for willful and wanton behavior. 
This case involved an Illinois nursing home resident at Provena Senior Services Nursing Home in Kane County, Illinois. In this 
Approximately 250,000 hip fractures occur each year among people older than 65 in the United States, with falls accounting for 87% of all fractures among people age 65 or older. And for the elderly, hip fractures can lead to severe health problems or even death. 
While local Illinois nursing homes are assuring residents that those residents with psychiatric or criminal histories are segregated from those residents who are elderly, infirm, or ill, this does not always prevent the nursing home residents from coming to harm. There have been reports of elderly residents being attacked, injured, or raped by some of the mentally ill residents or those who are convicted felons. 
Starting in the 1990s insurance companies began taking advantage of baby boomers by scooping up thousands of individual long-term care insurance policies. It seems that the expectation by the insurance companies was that the buyers would eventually give up paying the annual premiums and close out the files by taking the collected premium. 
In 2003, the resident, Dorothy Lawrence, began living at Beverly Manor Nursing Home in St. Joseph, Missouri. At the time Lawrence's daughter, Phyllis Skoglund, had power of attorney for her mother and signed the contract with the nursing home on behalf of the resident. 
In the past 3 years the instances of nursing home deficiencies in Illinois and nationwide has risen to over 91 percent. A "nursing home deficiency" would be anytime a nursing home fails to comply with federal requirements and standards. The most commonly cited of the 16 possible deficiencies were in terms of quality of care, quality of life, and resident assessment. 
All five of the plaintiffs are Cook County, Illinois residents that are eligible for Medicaid. All were living in private nursing homes that received state and federal funding. Plaintiffs believe that they could have been living in their own personal residences if they had been given the appropriate services. The plaintiffs alleged that the state of Illinois had denied them the benefits they would have received from various community services, specifically long-term care services and support in a community setting as opposed to the long-term, nursing home settings they were currently being offered. They further allege that these sorts of services would have given them the opportunity to live somewhere other than an institutionalized setting.
