Adult Day Care Van Fall Leaves Dementia Patient With Brain Injury, Settles For $625,000
A 67-year-old Massachusetts woman with dementia, a known fall risk who required a gait belt, was being helped out of a van by a new adult day care transport driver when she fell backward and struck her head. The fall caused a traumatic brain injury, and over the following two and a half years she went from living largely independently and walking with a walker to needing full assistance and eventual institutionalization. The parties disputed how much of her decline was caused by the fall versus the expected progression of her preexisting dementia. The claim settled for $625,000 in January 2020, with the case name and court withheld by the reporting publication.
What happened
A 67-year-old woman with dementia was transported every day between her home and an adult day care facility. She was a known fall risk who required staff to use a gait belt, a strap used to give an aide a secure grip while helping someone stand, turn, or step down safely. On the day that ended the arrangement, the facility sent a new driver to bring her home.
The driver failed to exercise proper care while helping her out of the van. Instead of a controlled transfer, she fell backward and struck her head on the ground. She was taken by ambulance to a suburban hospital, and from there she was flown to a hospital in Boston, where she was found to have suffered a traumatic brain injury.
What followed was two and a half years of moving between hospitals and rehabilitation facilities. Before the fall, she had lived in her own home, climbed stairs, gotten in and out of bed on her own, walked with a walker, and interacted with her family. After it, she needed full assistance with basic tasks, her speech became impaired, and she eventually became chair bound and bedridden before she was institutionalized.
The central dispute in the case was not whether the fall happened, but how much of her ultimate condition it caused. Dementia worsens on its own over time, and the question was how to separate the damage from the fall from the decline her preexisting disease would have produced anyway. Plaintiff's counsel used an expert physician who reviewed her medical records, photographs, and day-in-the-life video from before and after the incident to establish her actual baseline and show how far she dropped once the fall was added to her existing condition.
The case settled before trial for $625,000 in January 2020, a recovery shaped by the defense position that much of her decline was the dementia running its course rather than the fall. Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reported the result that June in its Verdicts and Settlements section and listed the case name and the court as withheld, so there is no public docket to check. The publication named Christopher DiBella of Methuen as the attorney for the plaintiff.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly Staff, June 11, 2020 (Verdicts & Settlements): full case narrative, the fall mechanism, injuries and their two-and-a-half-year progression, the causation dispute over preexisting dementia, the $625,000 settlement amount (January 2020), and attorney of record Christopher DiBella of Methuen, for the plaintiff
- 2.DiBella Law Injury and Accident Lawyers (firm)
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