In an important win for nursing home abuse/negligence claimants everywhere, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that Windsor Redding Care Center must pay the plaintiff’s legal fees after attempting – and failing – to remove a nursing home abuse lawsuit against it to federal court. According to the ruling, the court found that the defendant nursing home already knew that a precedential ruling on similar issues was in place, so the attempt to remove the case from state court would have been futile from the start. In other words, the nursing home was simply engaged in delay tacticts in an effort to tire out plaintiffs and coerce them into accepting a settlement.
Attorney Stuart Talley, who helped lead the plaintiff’s case as a member of Kershaw Talley Barlow, was quoted as saying, “This decision, and the trial court’s imposition of sanctions on the defendants, goes to show that nursing home defendants will go to extreme lengths to delay family members from receiving justice. There was simply no justification for the defendants’ efforts to remove this case to Federal Court other than to cause delay. We are happy the 9th Circuit recognized what was going on in this litigation and took appropriate action.”
Details of the Nursing Home COVID Outbreak Case
In the lawsuit against Windsor Redding Care Center, which our legal team originally filed in 2021, we argue that the nursing home’s negligence led to a deadly COVID-19 outbreak in late 2020. A total of 24 residents at the facility passed away from COVID complications. Our law firm represented 46 plaintiffs, a group comprised of 14 deceased residents and 32 family members who were affected by the losses of life.
While researching the case, we found that Windsor Redding employees were reportedly required to keep working even if they showed symptoms of COVID-19. By placing themselves in direct contact with medically vulnerable residents, it is extremely likely that employees spread the virus to residents and caused it to circulate through the nursing home. In fact, state inspectors found that the sick employees who were forced to work with Covid-19 were the cause of the outbreak. Paired with “extreme understaffing” that was alleged by workers there, elderly residents were put in direct contact with COVID-19 while also receiving inadequate medical care. Ultimately, the virus moved through the nursing home, causing dozens of recorded illnesses and 24 deaths.
Windsor Redding Tries to Dodge the Case
Through a series of calculated legal maneuveres, Windsor Redding tried to dodge and delay the case as much as possible. At one point, it argued that precedential law set by the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in Saldana v. Glenhaven Healthcare was inapplicable to the current case, but as the Ninth Circuit would recently explain, the defendant didn’t explain why it was inapplicable. Windsor Redding also brought up the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) to argue why it should be allowed to move the case away from California state courts and into federal court, which likely would have provided more legal protections for the nursing home.
However, the three-judge panel was not convinced by Windsor Redding’s attempts to slow down our client’s case. It found that the defendants did not provide any valid legal argument for removing the case, nor did it convincingly challenge the precedent set by Saldana. As such, the panel affirmed the lower court’s rulings, which included the order for the defendant to pay attorney fees and legal costs to the plaintiffs.
As explained in the recent appellate ruling, “The district court observed that defendants removed the case ‘despite binding and on-point Ninth Circuit authority disposing of the same asserted bases for jurisdiction in comparable cases’ and permissibly concluded that defendants therefore lacked ‘an objectively reasonable basis to contend that Saldana does not control.’”
Again, this decision is an important victory for anyone who has a similar claim in the future. The ruling not only blocked the defendant’s attempts to reposition the case and delay it further, but it also financially penalized Windsor Redding for even attempting the maneuvere in the first place. Any defendant who wants to attempt to delay a case in this way should think twice.
For more information about this important ruling, you can click here to view a full article posted by Law360 (log-in or subscription may be required). To learn more about Kershaw Talley Barlow, our legal team, and the types of cases we accept, call (916) 520-6639 and request a free consultation if you have a case of your own.