NURSING HOME LIABLITY IN MASSACHUSETTS
A recent Massachusetts case discusses nursing home fault. In Commonwealth v. Life Care Ctrs. of Am., Inc., 2010 Mass. LEXIS 222 (Mass. May 19, 2010), a nursing home employee removed guard orders from a patient's treatment sheets. The patient left the nursing home in her wheelchair, fell down a flight of steps, and died as a result of her injuries. Thereafter, a Massachusetts grand jury indicted the nursing home's operator, on several criminal charges, including involuntary manslaughter. The Commonwealth argued that: criminal liability may attach to a corporation based on the aggregate knowledge and conduct of its employees even where no individual employee had committed a crime. The Commonwealth sought to satisfy its burden to prove wanton or reckless conduct on the part of the corporate defendant by adding together the actions and omissions of corporate employees who at worst were merely negligent. Because wanton or reckless behavior was an essential element of the offense of involuntary manslaughter, the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction unless there is at least one individual whose behavior could be found to have been wanton or reckless. Permitting a finding of wantonness or recklessness to be derived by aggregating acts that are no more than negligent would impose on a corporation the stigma and other serious consequences of a criminal conviction even though no person in the corporation possessed the level of moral culpability that the definition of the crime requires.
While this case held that a nursing home was not criminally responsible, the nursing home could still be found liable in a civil case under a simple theory of negligence.
