6 May 2022: New Lawsuits Over NJ Nursing Home COVID Deaths Claim 'State-Created Danger'

New lawsuits over nursing home COVID deaths claim ‘state-created danger’

New Jersey is starting to accumulate its share of lawsuits filed against nursing homes for COVID deaths during the period Governor Phil Murphy's copycat version of New York's Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect. Here's an excerpt from the report:

The families of two women who died after catching COVID in the private nursing homes where they lived have sued state officials, saying the state ignored repeated warnings in the pandemic’s first weeks that its controversial approach to containing COVID in long-term care facilities would be deadly.

The lawsuits come nearly five months after the state agreed to pay almost $53 million to settle claims it botched its response to the COVID outbreak in state-run veterans’ homes.

The new lawsuits — filed late last month in federal court — accuse Gov. Phil Murphy and Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli of violating nursing home residents’ civil rights and creating dangerous conditions in homes through policies they implemented under Murphy’s executive order 103.

“Through the directive, the nursing homes were thrown under the bus,” attorney Michael S. Kasanoff wrote in one complaint.

That complaint criticizes state officials for requiring facilities to admit people who tested positive, refusing to require hospitals to test “medically stable” patients they transferred to nursing homes, and failing to adequately distribute face masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment in long-term care facilities in the pandemic’s early days.

Those policies fueled the virus’ spread, the complaints charge.

Officials also ignored providers’ pleas that they didn’t have enough resources to isolate sick residents or otherwise protect residents and staff as directed, the complaints say.

Murphy and Persichilli are liable under the “state-created danger doctrine,” Kasanoff wrote. That legal doctrine enables citizens to pursue remedies when the government — responsible for protecting the public — instead takes actions that endanger it.

For us, the most surprising part of this story is that New Jersey has a specific legal doctrine that comes into play whenever state officials endangers the public through their actions or negligence. That's not something that comes into existence in either a vacuum or after a single episode, which means state government officials must have established quite a track record to require it.