Blaming the Victim

She was a very kind woman, and the fact that she died in such a violent way is just an absolutely horrible thought.

–Adam Plares Jr., the grandson of a nursing home resident who was beaten to death by her roommate.

This horrifying story is the result of blatant carelessness by the Mission Skilled Nursing and Subacute Care staff, as they were aware of the roommate’s, or Connie Delucca’s past aggression, but still chose to place Plares in the room with her. Plares, an already vulnerable “97- or 98-year-old women,” was known to be physically weak, bedridden, and suffering from dementia.

While the nursing facility is said to have been aware of the Delucca’s dangerous tendencies, they actively chose to place her with the roommate because they thought Plares would not “annoy” her.

However, Delucca’s dangerous tendencies soon took over, and she violently beat her own roommate. To make matters worse, Plares died from her injuries after not having had them addressed due to a 20-hour delayed response time by the nursing home. While this may sound absurd, it’s actually far too common in nursing home protocol. Soon after the victim’s family started to sue the facility, Delucca was indicted and committed to a state mental hospital.

Plares’ family is now fighting for a sense of justice in a case against Mission (a collection of the LLCs, Mission Skilled Nursing, Covenant Care, and Sunset.) While the family argues that Plares’ case should be heard in court, Mission says Plares signed documents agreeing to arbitration—or a trial with a third party instead of a judge and jury. However, in addition to being disabled and elderly, the resident also did not speak English as her first language, had a fourth-grade education, and had limited communication skills.

Yet, the nursing home facility decided someone in her condition should be responsible for understanding and agreeing to a 60-page, complex, and critical legal document all by herself; she sat alone in bed while Mission verbally summarized pages of their highly technical contract, including the rights to arbitration, to her. As Plares’ attorney said, “It would take us [lawyers] hours to go through it carefully and understand it thoroughly. They went through [the contract] with Vera over the course of about 20 minutes. She had no idea what she was signing, or why she did not have any of the family members with her.”

Fortunately, Mission was unsuccessful in their blatant unethical argument for arbitration. Superior Court Judge Roberta S. Hayashi ruled that the arbitration agreement was “unconscionable,” or tremendously unfair and unenforceable.

However, Mission will continue to shamelessly fight the victim’s family. After failing to argue for arbitration, they contended that the agreement to place Plares with Delucca was also covered in the complex legal contract. The Judge also ruled against this.

Now, as Mission continues to drag out the case, they are claiming that Plares’ family did not actually have the grounds to sue and that any negligence was on the family’s part. As if causing their vulnerable family member to be violently beaten to death and denying any wrongdoing was not painful enough, Mission accusing the victim’s family of having caused this death within their own facility. They boldly state that, “Injuries were caused by the failure of the Plaintiffs to exercise reasonable care of their own safety and that such failure was the proximate cause of said injuries.”

As if this statement was not enough to clarify to the world that Mission has no interest in the well-being of their residents, they disgustingly added,

 “Any injuries…were caused by risk of which Plaintiffs were well aware and to which Plaintiffs voluntarily consented and voluntarily assumed unto themselves.”

The continuation of the case a year later merely prolongs the paid for the Plares family, having to constantly reimagine the brutal reality of her death. As Plare’s son said, “It’s like the first day it happened…It feels like the first day it happened.”

The family intends to continue their fight in search of a sense of justice for Plares.