Louisiana legislators again have introduced a bill that would limit the damages nursing home residents and families can receive from lawsuits.
State Senators Thomas Pressly and Alan Seabaugh, both Republicans from Shreveport, are the sponsors of Senate Bill 134. Areas of particular focus in the legislation include lawsuits against nursing home management companies as well as negligence and inadequate staffing litigation.
Seabaugh is an attorney who has defended a Bossier Parish nursing home company in a lawsuit filed by California-based Garcia & Artigliere, which has more than 65 lawsuits against nursing homes pending across Louisiana.
A similar bill died in the Legislature last year. It became known as the Bob Dean Protection Act. That refers to a nursing home owner who moved more than 800 residents from seven of his nursing homes to a former pesticide warehouse during Hurricane Ida in 2021.
The shelter was unsanitary and didn’t have air conditioning, and residents were not given adequate food, toilets, bedding and showers. That led to the Louisiana Department of Health doing an emergency evacuation of the warehouse.
About half of those residents who went to the warehouse filed a class-action lawsuit against Dean.
The bill would provide for definitions relative to medical malpractice, provide for definitions relative to declarations concerning life-sustaining procedures and provide for related matters.
It was introduced in the Senate earlier this month and currently is under consideration in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee.