$24,645,205.14 Jury Verdict in Donahue v. MBK Senior Living (2024)
In 2024, Karman Guadagni and Kelsey Craven obtained a Sonoma County Jury Verdict of $20,580,136.34 plus attorney’s fees and costs in the case of Donahue v. MBK Senior Living, et al. (2024), for a total judgment of $24,645,205.14.
Case Overview
Decedent Theresa Donahue was an 85-year-old resident at MuirWoods Memory Care (“MuirWoods”), an RCFE located in Petaluma, California. Throughout her admission to MuirWoods, Defendants knew she was at risk for falls and needed assistance due to her dementia and other medical conditions.
What Happened
Despite this knowledge, Defendants repeatedly failed to meet her needs, and as a result, Ms. Donahue suffered four falls, suffered from scabies for weeks, and suffered other forms of neglect during her admission to MuirWoods. The fourth fall on March 20, 2021 caused her to suffer a hip fracture, which caused her subsequent decline and death on April 15, 2022.
Plaintiffs’ claims centered on Defendants’ purposeful understaffing of MuirWoods in order to increase profits. Because there was testimony that Defendants multiple categories of staffing documents had been destroyed, Plaintiffs put on evidence of Defendants’ understaffing mostly through witness accounts and Defendants’ staffs’ admissions.
The evidence showed that Defendants did not take reasonable steps to increase their staffing levels, such as bringing in their clinical nurse consultant or sending in corporate staff to cover for management, including an Administrator who was away from her position for months during the critical time period between December 2020 and March 2021, and instead, they were sweeping millions of dollars a month from the defendant entities, including MuirWoods, to their REIT investors.
Outcome
The jury found for Plaintiffs 11-1 on the negligence claim, 12-0 on the elder abuse claim, 10-2 for the wrongful death claim. Because the jurors found oppression, the trial proceeded to a second phase on the Defendants’ ability to pay punitive damages.
MBK President Jeff Fischer testified as the Person Most Knowledgeable regarding defendants’ financial condition and was the sole witness for this second phase.