Lakewood Ranch families usually come to this office with a feeling before they come with proof: a parent who is suddenly thinner, a wound nobody mentioned, a fall that keeps happening. That feeling deserves to be checked against the facility’s own records. I represent Lakewood Ranch families in nursing home abuse, neglect, and wrongful death cases.
Lakewood Ranch’s facilities
Lakewood Ranch’s upscale senior communities and memory-care campuses have grown with the master-planned development along State Road 70 and University Parkway.
What to do this week
Start a dated notebook and photograph what you see. Request the complete chart in writing, because Florida law puts a working-day deadline on producing it. Report immediate danger to 911 and the state’s abuse hotline and the long-term-care ombudsman, which creates records the facility cannot edit, then have a lawyer send the preservation letter that freezes the video and staffing sheets. In these cases the family is the alarm system.
The clock, and the courthouse
A Lakewood Ranch case is litigated in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit at the Manatee County Judicial Center in downtown Bradenton, after a presuit notice and investigation period, generally on a two-year discovery clock. I worked the defense side of these cases before I chose to represent families.
See also the Manatee County nursing home abuse page.
The book
Hurt in a Florida Nursing Home
The warning signs, the records race, the staffing spreadsheet at the root of almost everything, the arbitration trap, and the two-year clock that is shorter than it sounds, in one plain-English book written for the family that suspects something is wrong. Free to Florida families, with the digital edition to read the moment you ask.
Common Questions
How do I get my mother’s records?
Put the request in writing as her health care surrogate, attorney-in-fact, or personal representative. Florida law gives the facility a set number of working days to produce the chart, so keep a copy of the dated request.
Is every bad outcome a case?
No. Frail people fall in good facilities, and skin can fail at the end of life despite real care. What separates tragedy from a case is the pattern: the staffing, the records, and a story that does not add up.
What does it cost?
Contingency: no fee unless there is a recovery, and the consultation is free. The greater cost is usually waiting, because the records race runs whether or not anyone is running it.
Related reading: nursing home abuse, bedsores, and about Rory Safir.
