LESLEY CLEMENT, Elder Abuse Attorney: She was there 10 days and she had a fall, and she was found face down on the floor. She was taken to the hospital alone. This woman suffered from dementia. They didnt have enough caregiving staff to put someone in the ambulance with her that could be her voice and talk for her at the hospital.
She comes back. Thats it. Shes put in bed. Shes put in a wheelchair. She doesnt move anymore. And thats what starts her breakdown. She was in the fetal position. She wasnt bathed. She had eight different areas of skin damage, pressure ulcers, dead skin that goes through muscle tissue. You can see into her body.
A.C. THOMPSON: After consulting with a doctor, Clement concluded that pressure sores led to Joans death. Under state law, seniors with wounds this serious are not allowed to remain in assisted living, but Joan stayed at Emerald Hills for weeks with these sores.
Jenny Hitt testified that she tried to treat the wounds herself, even though she knew she wasnt qualified to. She said her boss told her, Just dont let anybody know.
Clement also discovered that it was an Emeritus policy to keep the back door shut. Lisa Paglia, a former regional manager, testified about what that meant.
LESLEY CLEMENT: What did you understand Keep that back door closed to mean?
LISA PAGLIA: Dont let anybody move out unless they were deceased.
A.C. THOMPSON: But Emeritus CEO Granger Cobb, testifying under oath, disputed that description of the back door policy.
LESLEY CLEMENT: What does that term mean?
GRANGER COBB: They it it refers to trying to do everything we can in situations where residents want to stay with us, family want their loved ones to stay with us, to be able to to keep them. Families usually want their loved ones to stay with us as long as possible, as opposed to skilled nursing, you know, very institutional environment. And so we try to work with the families and do all we can to to, you know, accommodate that.
A.C. THOMPSON: In the Boice case, lawyers for Emeritus offered a completely different characterization of the care Joan received and why she died.
BRYAN REID, Defense Attorney, Emeritus: The care providers who were providing the care made it pretty clear that they worked very hard to take care of Joan Boice. We had testimony from witnesses who said, they observed outside witnesses they observed the care staff spending hours with Mrs. Boice, you know, taking care of her, repositioning her, keeping her clean. So the evidence dictated against Mrs. Boice being neglected.
I can understand how a family could be angry about whats happening to their loved one. Thats real. Where we go wrong is when we take that anger that that family has and that grief and that suffering and we direct it to the people who were there for the resident. Theyre not the evil. Its the diseases of aging that are the evil.
A.C. THOMPSON: It was Alzheimers and a series of strokes that led to Joans death, according to Dr. Richard Tindall, an expert witness for Emeritus.
RICHARD TINDALL, M.D., Neurologist: The bedsores or decubiti did not contribute to her death, OK? Shes having more and more difficulty walking and moving. She doesnt want to get up on her leg. They interpreted it as a problem with the foot. In reality, its paralysis of the leg. This is a stroke syndrome.
She died because of her Alzheimers and stroke leading to a bedridden status, an inability to take adequate nutrition and hydration, progressive dehydration, malnutrition, which then you stop breathing and you die. And that is, in fact, in a hospice situation, how Alzheimers patients and severe stroke patients die.
A.C. THOMPSON: To counter the Emeritus case, Clement tapped one of the countrys leading forensic geriatricians.
KATHRYN LOCATELL, MD, Forensic Geriatrician: The key record in this particular case is the description of the pressure ulcers that she acquired at Emeritus. We have photographic evidence and we have measurements taken at the nursing home where she went. We have a very complete description of what her condition was like when she left Emeritus.
We also have some records from before she went to Emeritus. If you just if you didnt know anything about Emeritus or the facility and you would look at the condition when she went in and the condition when she left, you would say, Wow, what happened to her? Something, you know, really bad must have happened to her. Then you look at the operation of the facility, and you say, She was neglected. Thats how she ended up like that.
A.C. THOMPSON: [on camera] And you think that neglect stems from there being not enough trained staff.
Dr. KATHRYN LOCATELL: Exactly. Not enough staff, so no one can help her walk, to keep her walking. And if you dont help her move, shes going to get a pressure injury to her skin. So those things all should have been done. Instead, nothing was done.
A.C. THOMPSON: [voice-over] Deep into the litigation, Emeritus offered to settle the case.
ERIC BOICE: So the company came to us and offered us $3.3 million to walk away, to turn our back and not say any more about this case.
A.C. THOMPSON: [on camera] They offered you $3 million?
ERIC BOICE: Over $3 million, yeah. And so and thats a substantial amount of money. But that also came with, basically, a gag order, an order that we wouldnt have been able to talk. We would not have been able to share my moms story.
They wanted us to turn over all of our investigative everything they knew that we had a lot of stuff that had been uncovered, and they wanted all that. They wanted it all to be shredded, all to be destroyed. That was part of the bargain for the money. And we werent willing to do that.
A.C. THOMPSON: [voice-over] Emeritus says it never told the family it would shred the documents and that any offer it made was not an admission of wrongdoing.
And so the trial went on. And on March 5th, 2013, all 12 jurors found the Emeritus Corporation liable for recklessness, oppression and fraud in the wrongful death of Joan Boice. And they ruled that Emeritus executives were well aware of the unfitness of their employees.
The jury awarded punitive damages of nearly $23 million. The amount came from combining Granger Cobbs annual compensation with that of the companys chairman. And the 81 cents? That was to remind Emeritus of Joans age.
