The overwhelming majority of personal injury plaintiff's could not possibly afford to pay their attorneys if they had to pay up front, win or lose. The contingency fee contract illuminates much of the financial risk to the client by shifting the risk of loss to the lawyer. As a result, clients are much more willing to prosecute wrongs done to them. On the other hand, shifting the risk of loss to the attorney makes the lawyer much more selective about which cases to prosecute because losing means the lawyer will not get paid. Some nursing homes have figured out a way turn the Florida nursing home abuse lawyers selection process into an Achilles heal.

The personal injury attorney selection process is based on two components. First, the attorney must determine if the case has merit. Second, the attorney must determine if the wrongdoer is judgment proof. In a previous post, I discussed the fact that Some Florida nursing home chains have figured out they can discourage Florida nursing home abuse attorneys from pursuing a case against them by making it very difficult to collect a personal injury judgment. In this post, I discuss how it is done.

Although each Florida nursing home chain is set up somewhat differently, the basic concept is the same. The first step is to separate all the corporate assets into different companies. One company owns the license to operate the facility, one company owns the property, one company provides management services, and one company does the accounting. The next step is to ensure that only the company that owns the license provides patient care. This company will own nothing of value and have the obligation of paying all the employees. Payments for the provision of patient care are paid to this corporation. Any money left over each month after paying the employees is immediately siphoned off by the other corporations as charges for services. The process makes the company that holds the license unable to pay a judgment. If the corporations that do not hold the license are sued, their attorneys claim they are not responsible for nursing home neglect because they are not involved in patient care. Unfortunately, Florida judges often agree. The final step in the process is to purchase very little if any liability insurance.

The lack of liability insurance means any payment for injuries or death caused by abuse or neglect must come out of the corporate assets. The complicated corporate structure makes it difficult to hold any of the companies other than the license holder responsible. The fact that the license holder has no real assets coupled with all of the above discourages most Florida personal injury attorneys from bringing claims.

Florida has become a haven for corrupt nursing home operators that use the corporate form to hide their assets from Florida nursing home abuse lawyers attempting to hold them accountable for injury, neglect, abuse and death that occurs in their nursing home facilities. Charles Elmore, a writer for the Palm Beach Post has done an excellent job at exposing one form of the corporate shell game that goes on involving nonprofit corporations. In his article entitled "Post investigation: Nursing home CEO pulls in hefty pay, patients' families frustrated", he details what appears to be the extravagant siphoning of money by top corporate family executives in one Florida nonprofit nursing home chain that has been cited by regulators for substandard nursing home care.

Charles Elmore's article focuses on the Okeechobee Council on Aging Inc. and the Council on Aging of Florida Inc which apparently own nursing homes in Pahokee, Gainesville, and Bradenton Florida. Unfortunately, the type of corporate wrongdoing that he alleges occurred in this case is very common in Florida nursing homes. In this case, the vehicle used was the nonprofit corporation. In other cases, the vehicle used is the limited liability company or LLC. Regardless of the corporate form, the result is always the same. A complicated structure of interlocking corporations is used to siphon money away from nursing home patient care and into the hands of the individuals that are pulling the strings. The complicated corporate structure insulates the wrongdoers at the top from responsibility for the injury, neglect, abuse, and death that occurs in the nursing homes while simultaneously protecting the corporate assets from judgments and collection efforts by Florida nursing home neglect attorneys. In fact, the insulation is so complete that most of them do not even bother to obtain liability insurance. Often the wrongdoers are never held accountable for diverting money that should be used for nursing home patient care into their pockets.
Accountability is avoided because of the way the law allows nursing home operators to layer interlocking corporations. I will discuss the interlocking structures in the next post.

Insurance companies often ask people involved in Florida personal injury accidents to give a recorded statement. There are times when it makes sense to do so. There are also times when a recorded statement should not be given. Click on this link regarding giving a recorded statement in a Florida personal injury case to watch a video I prepared discussing the subject.

The leading cause of death for children in the United States is automobile accidents. As a result, all states, including Florida have very detailed child car seat restraint laws. Although the overwelming majority of parents follow the laws and use child car seats, the death statistics remain high. One of the main reasons appears to be the fact that parents have difficulty following the car seat manufacturer's instructions on how to properly install and use the them.

As a lawyer that handles Lakeland car accident injury cases, I see first hand tragedies like the recent death of an improperly restrained 11 month old girl traveling on US 27 in Davenport. Gary White has done an excellent job of bringing attention to this important issue in an article posted in the Lakeland Ledger. In the article, he identifies the Lakeland and Polk county Florida area resources available to help parents learn how to properly use child seat restraints. He also does a very good job of pointing the statistics on the subject.

Walgreens recently announced its third quarter results. According to an Associated Press Article published in the New York Times, Walgreens pharmacy sales were up 4.5 percent for the quarter over last year. There was no mention in the article about whether pharmacy errors were also up. That is because there is no National requirement to report them. Only the pharmacies themselves really know the statistics on how many prescriptions are misfilled and how many lead to injuries. Some have suggested the error rate is about 3 percent. However, one thing is clear, prescription mistakes continue to happen.

Alison Young of the Atlanta Constitution recently wrote an enlightening article on the subject. In the article she describes the personal stories of several consumers that recieved the wrong medicine or wrong dose of medicine. She pointed out that CVS, Rite Aid, Kmart and Kroger, the leading pharmacy chains in Georga, have issued statements saying that safety is their top priority and that they all have systems to ensure prescription accuracy.