Jacksonville Jury Awards $2.5 Million After Hospice Aide Blinds Dementia Patient at Memory Care Facility

Anne Fiorito lived in the memory care unit at Cypress Village Retirement Community in Jacksonville, a facility that cost her family roughly $10,000 per month. Vitas Healthcare Corporation of Florida was contracted to provide hospice and palliative care on-site, sending its own aides to assist with her daily needs.

In 2017, during a bed bath and shampoo, Fiorito received a direct blow to her right eye. Medical experts who reviewed the case concluded the force was consistent with a strike from a fist or elbow. The blow caused multiple hemorrhages and a detached retina. She permanently lost vision in that eye and died in early 2018.

Vitas had initially assigned two aides to Fiorito's care, a precaution given her dementia and the risk that she could become combative. At some point Vitas reduced that to a single aide. That aide reportedly told her supervisor she needed help and could not safely manage alone. Vitas did not restore the second worker.

When the family filed suit, Vitas declined to accept responsibility and offered $125,000 to settle. Attorney Steve Watrel of Coker Law took the case to a Duval County jury. Medical testimony at trial established that the injury required a direct impact rather than an accidental brush, and that Vitas had known its staffing reduction created a foreseeable safety gap.

In May 2021, the jury returned a verdict of $2,447,500. The award reflected the pain and loss Fiorito suffered during the final months of her life after the injury robbed her of sight in one eye.