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If your loved one has been injured in a nursing home, how can you file a claim?
I'm Nursing Home Injury Lawyer Dan Pruitt,
and that's the sort of case we handle every day. Beginning in the year 2005, the
South Carolina legislature enacted a statute
that sets out how you can file a claim against a nursing home.
In essence, you must do a lot of work before you're even in a position
to file a claim. First, you must get all the records from the nursing home or any
other health care providers
Second, you have to provide that to a nurse or other qualified health care
provider,
who will review those records, and determine if the facility has neglected
your loved one,
or has breached its professional standard of care.
If the nurse determines that the nursing home has committed neglect, he or she
will give an affidavit.
Then we take the affidavit, combine it with the information that we know about
the injury,
and we file a notice of intent to sue with the court.
We must allow 90 to 120 days for the nursing home company to investigate the
case,
and then undertake a mediation, in which we present all the evidence and attempt to
resolve the case.
If we cannot resolve the case at that first mediation,
then we're entitled to file a lawsuit. During the lawsuit phase,
we can gather additional information, by having depositions, which is where we're
able to
take sworn statements from the various witnesses in the case.
In addition, we can swap information with
interrogatories, or requests to produce documents. Once we've had a chance
to explore all the facts of the case,
then we come to the 300-day mediation,
which is sometimes considered the real mediation.
because at that time the staff has been deposed,
your clients have been deposed, all the information is known. At the mediation,
we would sit down and with the help of a skilled
lawyer, or retired judge, each of the parties presents a case,
and has a chance to discuss whether to settle the case, and under what terms.
If we cannot settle the case in the mediation around 300 days in the case
would proceed on towards trial.
There'd be a full trial that may take as long as a week or even two weeks,
in which all the witnesses would testify, and ultimately,
the jury would decide whether the nursing home had neglected
your loved one and to what extent they should award damages,
whether actual damages for punitive damages. If you would like to talk more
about the process of filing a claim against a nursing home, call me today.
864-232-4273
or visit me on the web
www.DanPruittLawFirm.com