$200 Million Verdict for 92-Year-Old Who Fell Down Nursing Home Stairwell Strapped in Her Wheelchair
After trial: Unopposed verdict against a dissolved company; never paid. The estate shared the $23.7M six-estate bankruptcy settlement.
Won by Wilkes & Associates, P.A..
A Pinellas County jury awarded $60 million in compensatory and $140 million in punitive damages over the death of 92-year-old Elvira Nunziata, who tumbled down a stairwell still strapped in her wheelchair at the Pinellas Park Care and Rehab Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case where the defunct operator Trans Health Management presented no defense at all, meaning the record-setting sum was symbolic from the start; the estate later recovered only a share of a modest multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
What happened
The clearest way to describe this verdict is the way the Tampa Bay Times did at the time: record-breaking, and won without a defense. When a Pinellas County jury awarded $200 million over Elvira Nunziata's death in January 2012, no lawyer sat at the defense table. The company held liable, Trans Health Management Inc., was defunct, its parent was in a Maryland receivership, and the family's own lawyers alleged that the investors who really stood behind the chain had simply chosen not to defend the case. The verdict was never going to be collected as written. What it did was fix, on the public record, responsibility for one of the ugliest nursing home deaths in Florida memory.
Elvira Nunziata was 92 and had dementia. She lived at the Pinellas Park Care and Rehab Center, a facility with a history of deficiency citations that former aides described as chronically understaffed. One day in October 2004, strapped into her wheelchair, she went through a stairwell door that was supposed to be locked and alarmed. Former aides testified that staff often disabled the alarm so they could slip out to smoke. She toppled a full story down the steps. More than an hour passed before anyone noticed she was missing. She was found at the bottom of the stairwell, still strapped into the chair, and did not survive.
Her son sued in 2005 on behalf of her estate, with Richard Nunziata serving as personal representative. The case was built by Tampa's Wilkes & McHugh, the firm that made Trans Healthcare litigation its signature and now practices as Wilkes & Associates; its attorneys Bennie Lazzara Jr., Isaac Ruiz-Carus, and Joanna Greber appear as the estate's counsel in the appellate record. By the time the case reached trial in January 2012, Trans Health Management had defaulted and dissolved, and the damages trial proceeded unopposed. The jury deliberated less than an hour before returning $60 million in compensatory damages and $140 million in punitive damages, then the largest nursing home verdict in the country.
Even the appeal showed how hollow the losing side had become. In December 2014 Florida's Second District Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal brought in Trans Health Management's name, holding that an administratively dissolved corporation had no right to prosecute it.
The money question took years longer and ended small. The Nunziata estate filed its $200 million claim in the involuntary bankruptcy of Fundamental Long Term Care Inc. in Tampa, joining five other estates of Trans Healthcare residents, all with what the Eleventh Circuit called empty-chair verdicts, in accusing the chain's owners of shuffling assets beyond creditors' reach. After a twelve-day bench trial, the six estates settled with the remaining defendants for a combined $23.7 million. Divided six ways, that is a sliver of the verdict. The $200 million stands as a jury's unanswered judgment about how a 92-year-old woman came to die alone in a stairwell, rendered against a company that could not be bothered to appear and never paid a dollar of it.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Tampa Bay Times·Archived copy
- 2.Trans Health Management, Inc. v. Nunziata (Fla. 2d DCA, Dec. 19, 2014)
- 3.AboutLawsuits: Pinellas County jury awards $200 million over Elvira Nunziata's 2004 stairwell death·Archived copy
- 4.In re Fundamental Long Term Care (11th Cir. 2017): Nunziata estate's $200M claim among the six estates' empty-chair verdicts
More proven verdicts from Wilkes & Associates, P.A.
All Wilkes & Associates, P.A. proven verdicts →A Polk County jury awarded $110 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages over the death of 69-year-old Arlene Townsend, who fell 17 times at the Auburndale Oaks Healthcare Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case against Trans Healthcare entities that had defaulted, stopped defending, and were already insolvent and in receivership, which is why the judgment was largely symbolic and the estate ultimately recovered only a small share of a later multi-estate settlement.
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.
Margaretha Sauer, a 93-year-old resident of Rich Mountain Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Mena, Arkansas, died in July 1998 after five and a half years in the facility's care. Her estate sued the nursing home's corporate owners for negligence, medical malpractice, breach of contract, and wrongful death, presenting evidence of chronic understaffing, untreated weight loss and dehydration, and unaddressed pressure sores. A Polk County jury returned combined judgments of $78,425,000, reported at the time as the largest verdict against an Arkansas nursing home. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed liability on condition of remittitur, cutting the negligence and malpractice damages to $5,000,000 and the punitive award to $21,000,000, and the United States Supreme Court denied review in November 2003, leaving the reduced judgment final.
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