Family Files Wrongful Death Suit Against Home Health Care Company and Retirement Community
Our clients have filed a suit in Larimer County District Court against Visiting Angels and Rigden Farms Senior Living (“Rigden Farms”) for the wrongful death of their mother. The family has also brought a claim for deceptive trade practices against these entities.
The suit alleges, among other things, that Rigden Farms, a senior community, essentially held itself out as an assisted living facility with a higher level of care by allowing a home health care agency, Visiting Angels, to have an office on the Rigden Farms campus, free of charge. Plaintiffs allege that both Rigden Farms and Visiting Angels agreed to care for their mother.
The Plaintiffs allege that Visiting Angels was supposed to send a caregiver to check in on their mother, who had developed flu-like symptoms. The suit alleges that no caregiver came as scheduled. The family claims that when Visiting Angels did come in for its next visit, their mother was found in bed and was noted to be “very confused.” She was normally independent and cognitively intact. The family claims that Visiting Angels failed to notify them of their mother’s serious change of condition and that Visiting Angels also failed to send a caregiver back that afternoon.
Plaintiffs allege that the next time a Visiting Angels caregiver came to check on their mother she was found unresponsive in her chair. She had also vomited in her bed profusely. The suit alleges that the caregiver simply made the bed over the vomit without cleaning it up, and again failed to notify medical personnel and the family about her near-death condition. When one of the Plaintiff-daughters attempted to call her mother later that day, her mother did not pick up. The daughter then went to Rigden Farms and found her mother in the same position that she had been left in some hours earlier by the Visiting Angels caregiver. The daughter called 911 and her mother was emergently transported to the hospital, where she died a few hours later.
The Plaintiffs claim that Visiting Angels and Rigden Farms engaged in a joint venture with regard to the home healthcare services provided to their mother. The Plaintiffs allege that these Defendants acted negligently in the care and supervision provided to their mother, and also that they misrepresented the quality and quantity of the care and services they provided in their marketing and advertising materials.
