Louisiana lawmaker who works as nursing home attorney revives bill to protect them from lawsuits

Louisiana lawmakers will take up legislation for the second year in a row that would limit the amount of money nursing home residents and their families receive from lawsuits over injuries, neglect and wrongful deaths.

Sens. Thomas Pressly and Alan Seabaugh, Republicans from Shreveport, sponsored Senate Bill 134, which would make it more difficult to sue nursing home management companies and obtain large monetary judgments for negligence and inadequate staffing.

The legislation is a response to a flurry of lawsuits brought over the past two years against Louisiana nursing homes, whose owners are prolific donors to legislators and other state elected officials. 

Just one California-based law firm, Garcia & Artigliere, has 66 lawsuits pending against nursing homes across the state. They would be curbed if the legislation becomes law, said Matthew Coman, the firm’s attorney in New Orleans who handles its local cases. 

In addition to sponsoring the bill, Seabaugh was hired as an attorney to defend a Bossier Parish nursing home operator against a Garcia & Artigliere lawsuit the legislation could restrict.  

“The fact is, unlike trial lawyers, I actually try to pass bills that cost me business,” Seabaugh said when asked to comment on his involvement in one of the lawsuits. 

“If the bill passes, people in the future don’t hire me,”  he said. “I’m perfectly happy to pass bills that cost me business.”

Advocates for senior citizens are opposed to the legislation, saying it will prevent improvements to Louisiana’s already poorly-rated nursing home industry. 

“What this means is, if your loved one is in a nursing home and is injured due to abuse or neglect, you and your family might be paying for their injuries instead of being able to properly seek legal restitution,” said Andrew Muhl, state advocacy director for AARP Louisiana. 

The Louisiana Nursing Home Association, a trade group that represents nursing home owners, did not respond to multiple calls and emails with questions for this report. 

Medical malpractice

Pressly, the co-author of the bill, said the state needs to rein in health care lawsuits that are circumventing the state’s existing medical malpractice restrictions.

In Louisiana, most lawsuits brought against a health care provider for injury or death have an award cap of $500,000 outside of costs related to future medical care. Of the $500,000, only $100,000 has to come directly from the health care provider. The remaining $400,000 comes from a state fund set up to cover those expenses.

Coman and his law firm get around this medical malpractice cap and have won multimillion dollar verdicts for their clients by suing nursing homes management companies alongiside the nursing homes themselves.

Coman contends the management companies are not direct health care providers and therefore not covered by the medical malpractice cap. The Pressly and Seabaugh legislation would make it explicit in the law that management organizations are health care providers covered by malpractice limits. 

“I think it’s important that we shore up the medical malpractice act,” Pressly said. 

‘Bob Dean Protection Act’

A similar bill was derailed in the legislature last year after it became known as the “Bob Dean Protection Act,” a reference to the disgraced nursing home owner who moved approximately 840 residents from his nursing homes to an ill-equipped former pesticide warehouse for shelter during Hurricane Ida in 2021.

Dean’s shelter in Tangipahoa Parish was without air conditioning and unsanitary. Residents were not provided with adequate food, toilets, bedding and showers, according to the Louisiana Department of Health, which performed an emergency evacuation from the warehouse. 

Some of the residents’ deaths and declines in health have been attributed to the site’s atrocious conditions. About half of the residents sent to the warehouse joined a class-action lawsuit to obtain financial damages from Dean.

Coman, who worked on the lawsuit from Dean’s residents, maintains this year’s legislation, like last year’s version, would make such court actions impossible. Dean’s residents and their surviving family members, who are already upset about the sizes of their awards, would have seen far less compensation, he said. 

“It would eviscerate a cause of action and an ability to sue for a claim of damages across the board,” Coman said of the Pressly and Seabaugh bill.

Pressly disagrees. The limits his legislation would place on nursing home lawsuits would not have applied in the Dean case because Dean’s behavior was so egregious, it is considered “intentional” and “criminal,”  he said. 

Bed sore lawsuits

Since last year’s legislation was scuttled, Coman’s clients have won two verdicts from Louisiana juries against nursing homes.

One awarded $3.5 million to the surviving relatives of nursing home patients who died after living at Chateau St. James Rehab and Retirement in Lutcher. A separate $2.1 million award was given to Bonnie Bennett, whose father, Raymond Davidson, died after living at Heritage Manor West in Shreveport. 

Bennett’s lawsuit and the one that Seabaugh is defending against a nursing home are similar.

Bennett alleged her father developed bed sores on lower back, buttocks and groin because his Shreveport nursing home did not have enough nurses on staff at the facility. Those conditions allegedly led to his death, according to her lawsuit.

Seabaugh is one of a handful of lawyers defending the Old Brownlee Community Care Center in Bossier City against another lawsuit from Kimberly Remedies. 

Remedies’ father, Frank Hooper, was transferred to a hospital after a two-week stay at the nursing home. She alleges he developed bed sores and “severe sepsis”  during his time at the home, which contributed to his death a few months later, according to her lawsuit. The care center has denied the accusations. 

Seabaugh has said there is a risk of several nursing homes in Louisiana closing if the state doesn’t try to limit damages from such lawsuits. The facilities don’t have adequate insurance to fight these types of legal actions, he said.

“It will bankrupt every nursing home in the state,” Seabaugh said.

Strong political connections

Nursing home owners are largely dependent on the state Medicaid program, which is overseen by the Louisiana Department of Health. As a result, the owners are very active in politics and among the most generous political donors to legislators and governors alike.

A WVUE-TV Fox 8 investigation found the nursing home industry spent $3.2 million on political contributions to  state elected officials over four years from 2017-20. Facility owners are also paying lobbyists who work during the legislative session more than $375,000 this year, according to state records. 

The Bossier City nursing home Seabaugh is defending is also part of CommCare Corp., a statewide nursing home network former Louisiana House Speaker Jim Tucker leads.

Coman’s law firm is pushing back, however. State records show Garcia & Artigliere donated $25,000 to Cajun PAC II, a political committee benefitting Gov. Jeff Landry. The contribution came on June 25, 2024, less than a month after the legislature adjourned its regular session last year without passing the nursing home protection legislation.

The California law firm also hired four Louisiana-based lobbyists ahead of the legislative session this year. They include at least $100,000 for Alton Ashy, who is close to the governor, and at least $25,000 for former state Sen. Rick Ward.