$3.5 Million Settlement After $18 Million Verdict Over Haldol Death of Idaho Nursing Home Resident
After trial: The $18 million punitive verdict of May 2006 was replaced by a $3.5 million settlement by November 2006, so the settlement is the figure that stood. About $3.4 million came from the home's two insurers and about $100,000 from the home.
Delbert Hayward, 86, a mechanic, died in February 1995 after nearly a year at Valley Vista Care Center in St. Maries, Idaho, where his family said he was repeatedly given the antipsychotic drug Haldol to control him. After a three-week trial in May 2006, a Benewah County jury returned an $18 million punitive verdict. By November 2006 the case had resolved in a $3.5 million settlement, most of it paid by the home's insurers.
What happened
Delbert L. Hayward, a mechanic who had been living at home in Emida, Idaho, with help from home health aides, entered Valley Vista Care Center in St. Maries on March 11, 1994. He was 85. He died there on February 16, 1995, at 86. His son, Alfred S. Hayward, sued as personal representative of his estate and spent the next eleven years pursuing the case.
The family's account was that Delbert Hayward was a frail but feisty man who had tried to leave the home and who believed his late wife had been mistreated there. They said staff responded by controlling him with repeated, heavy doses of Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic used here as a chemical restraint, and that the practice contributed to his death. Their lawyers also documented more than 700 violations of federal nursing home regulations in his care.
The case took a long route to trial. Alfred Hayward filed a wrongful-death action in federal court and a contract action in Idaho state court in February 1997. The federal case was dismissed in 1999 for lack of diversity, and the state court declined to add the wrongful-death claim. In 2001 the Idaho Supreme Court reinstated the wrongful-death claim in Hayward v. Valley Vista Care Corp., 136 Idaho 342, while upholding dismissal of the contract claims.
Trial opened in Benewah County in May 2006 and ran three weeks. Spokane lawyer Richard C. Eymann tried the case for the estate, with co-counsel Debra Stephens and Sandra Cody. Dr. Sam Kidder, who helped draft the federal nursing home reform rules governing antipsychotic drugs, testified. On May 17 the jury returned an 11 to 1 verdict of $18 million in punitive damages after less than five hours of deliberation. Eymann said afterward that nursing home abuse would not be tolerated and that he hoped the verdict would change the culture in nursing home care. The home's owner said he planned to appeal.
The verdict did not stand. By early November 2006 the parties had settled for $3.5 million: about $100,000 from Valley Vista and about $3.4 million from its two insurers, Continental and GuideOne Mutual. Court filings showed the case had reached trial in part because those insurers could not agree on a settlement earlier. Eymann said no one wanted to fight Valley Vista in bankruptcy court, adding that you can't get blood out of a turnip. Alfred Hayward said he had made a commitment at his father's grave to try to do something about it.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.The Spokesman-Review, 'Jury awards $18 million in elder abuse case', May 18, 2006·Archived copy
- 2.The Spokesman-Review, 'Record judgment reduced', Nov. 7, 2006·Archived copy
- 3.Hayward v. Valley Vista Care Corp., 136 Idaho 342, 33 P.3d 816 (Idaho 2001)
- 4.Hayward v. Valley Vista Care Corp., Idaho Supreme Court opinion, 2001·Archived copy
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