Richmond County Jury Awards $1.1 Million in Nursing Home Neglect Death of Alzheimer's Patient
After trial: Jury verdict; reversed on appeal.
Won by Parker Waichman LLP.
A Richmond County jury awarded $1,102,000 to the family of a 73-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease who fell at a Staten Island nursing facility and died weeks later; the Appellate Division reversed the judgment in 2020 and ordered a new trial.
What happened
Rose Nieves was 73 years old and living with Alzheimer's dementia, partial paralysis from a prior stroke, and a rectovaginal fistula when she was admitted to Clove Lakes Health Care and Rehabilitation in Staten Island in January 2011. Staff assessed her as a high fall risk on intake. She stayed at the facility for roughly four weeks.
On February 7, 2011, a staff member placed the decedent in a wheelchair in a hallway directly across from the nurses' station. Within seconds of being left there she stood up on her own, lost her balance, and fell. The fall caused hemorrhaging from the existing fistula. She died on March 9, 2011, approximately one month after the fall.
Parker Waichman LLP, with Jay L.T. Breakstone of counsel, filed suit on behalf of the family in Supreme Court, Richmond County, seeking damages for negligence, wrongful death, and violations of New York Public Health Law Section 2801-d, which protects the rights of nursing home residents. The case turned on whether the facility's decision to leave a documented high-fall-risk patient unattended in a hallway, rather than in a secured room or with adequate supervision, fell below the applicable standard of care.
The jury found the facility negligent and found that the negligence was a proximate cause of the decedent's injuries. It also found that the facility had violated Public Health Law Section 2801-d and that the violation was a substantial factor in causing her harm. The February 14, 2017 judgment totaled $1,102,000: $400,000 for deprivation of statutory resident rights, $400,000 for pain and suffering, $200,000 for loss of services, $100,000 for medical expenses, and $2,000 for funeral expenses.
Clove Lakes appealed. On January 22, 2020, the Appellate Division, Second Department reversed the judgment with costs and remitted the case to Supreme Court, Richmond County for a new trial on both liability and damages. The reversal means the $1,102,000 award did not stand; the litigation was returned to the trial level.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Parker Waichman LLP
All Parker Waichman LLP proven verdicts →In early 2014, Biomet agreed to pay at least $56 million to settle about 1,000 federal lawsuits over its M2a 38 and M2a Magnum metal-on-metal hip implants, consolidated in the Northern District of Indiana. Qualifying patients who had the device revised received a base award of $200,000, adjusted by individual factors. Thomas Anapol was court-appointed Co-Lead Counsel with W. Mark Lanier and signed the agreement for the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee. The figure covers many unrelated plaintiffs, is a reported minimum rather than a final total, and is not itemized by person.
A Nassau County jury found on June 26, 2025 that South Shore Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Freeport violated the Public Health Law and was negligent in caring for resident Henry Serrapica, who developed pressure ulcers on his heels, ankle and sacral area during 2019 and died that December. The jury awarded $5 million, including $1 million in punitive damages. In January 2026 the trial court denied the defense motions to set the verdict aside, reduce it or order a new trial, and the case then went to the Appellate Division.
Related medical malpractice verdicts
A Utah judge entered a $951 million default judgment against Steward Health Care after newly trained nurses, an excessive Pitocin drip, and a delayed C-section at Jordan Valley Medical Center left a newborn permanently brain damaged.
A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
A Clark County jury ordered Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health Services to pay $524 million after finding the UnitedHealth Group subsidiaries negligently credentialed a gastroenterologist whose unsafe injection practices at his Las Vegas endoscopy clinics caused the largest medically caused hepatitis C outbreak in American history.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.