Widow defends wrongful-death claim against Iowa nursing home

New allegations of wrongdoing have emerged in the latest wrongful death lawsuit involving a Pleasant Hill nursing home.

Court records indicate Parkridge Specialty Care of Pleasant Hill has been sued three times in recent years for wrongful death. The most recent case, filed in August 2025 by the estate of Maris Bergis, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages from the home’s corporate owner, Care Initiatives of West Des Moines, for alleged dependent adult abuse, recklessness, negligence and wrongful death.

The lawsuit alleges Parkridge “negligently cared for Bergis and violated numerous regulations, laws, rights, and industry standards, causing (him) personal injury, illness, harm, and a decline in health.”

According to the lawsuit, Bergis was admitted to Parkridge on Sept. 1, 2023, for what was initially planned to be a 48-hour stay following his hospitalization for pneumonia. Upon admission, he was allegedly alert, awake and oriented, and Parkridge was tasked with providing physician-prescribed breathing treatments and monitoring him for difficulty with breathing and any signs of anxiety, confusion or restlessness.

During the course of Bergis’ stay at Parkridge, the staff at the home allegedly failed to administer the breathing treatments. The Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing subsequently cited Parkridge for its care of Bergis, finding that it had delayed providing necessary medical care and treatment.

While the lawsuit does not indicate when, where or how Bergis died, it claims the “gross negligence, and/or recklessness” of Care Initiatives and Parkridge “were the cause of Bergis’ decline in health, injuries, damages and untimely death.”

State inspection reports indicate Bergis was alive, but was increasingly nonresponsive, late in the afternoon on Sept. 4, 2023, which was three days after his admission to Parkridge. The inspection records indicate Bergis was sent to a hospital by ambulance at his spouse’s insistence, but they provide no information as to the hospital’s diagnosis or treatment outcome.

Widow: ‘Staff frequently failed to respond’

In recent case filings, Bergis’ widow, Leila Bergis, recounted in a sworn affidavit her version of what transpired at Parkridge during her husband’s stay at the facility.

“When he arrived at Parkridge, he was not in a diaper,” she stated. “However, he called to go to the restroom once, and they did not come quickly enough, so he urinated in his pants. After that, they put him in a diaper – not because he was incontinent, but because they were not attending to his calls for assistance to use the bathroom … On multiple occasions, Maris and I used the call light to request assistance. Staff frequently failed to respond in a timely manner. Many times, staff took more than fifteen minutes and up to at least 30 minutes to respond.

“On one occasion, I arrived at Parkridge and found Maris in bed with his clothing soaked in urine. I called for staff to assist him. Although staff changed his undergarments, they did not bathe him or otherwise clean him… After Maris’ stay, while cleaning out his room, my daughters and granddaughter discovered a pair of his sweatpants in a dresser drawer that were soaked with urine.”

In her affidavit, Leila Bergis described the physician-ordered breathing treatments her husband was to receive while at Parkridge.

“The Parkridge staff did not set up Maris’ breathing treatment equipment or have the albuterol — the medication — in his room,” she alleged. “The equipment sat unplugged underneath the TV. Because of this, Parkridge did not give Maris the breathing treatments that were ordered by his physician. Even if I wanted to help give him a breathing treatment while he was at Parkridge, I couldn’t. This is because Parkridge did not have any albuterol in the room.”

Attorney: ‘They stripped Maris of his dignity’

She said that one day she arrived at the facility and found her husband “partially out of his bed and struggling to breathe. I demanded he be taken by ambulance to the hospital. When the paramedics arrived, Maris was barely breathing. At that time, a nurse attempted to cover up Parkridge’s neglect by administering a breathing treatment as if it was part of their routine care. This was the first and only time Parkridge ever attempted to provide him with a breathing treatment.

“When Maris arrived on September 1, 2023, his prognosis was to come home. However, in about three days, Parkridge treated him so poorly and neglected him so badly — by letting him soak in his own urine and failing to give him prescribed treatment — that we had to rush him out of Parkridge by ambulance to the hospital.”

Care Initiatives has denied any wrongdoing, and is seeking to have the case dismissed due to the plaintiffs’ failure to file a certificate of merit signed by an expert witness who can attest to Parkridge’s alleged failure to meet the standard of care expected of the home.

In response to that argument, the Bergis family’s attorney, Matthew M. Sahag, has filed a brief with the court arguing that Care Initiatives is claiming “you need an expert to say it’s wrong to strip a man of his dignity – leaving him to sit in his own urine while he struggled to breathe. The Iowa Supreme Court says otherwise. So does common sense … They stripped Maris of his dignity and now ask this court to believe that ordinary Iowans cannot understand that.”

The court has yet to rule on the motion to dismiss the case, and a trial in the matter remains scheduled for Oct. 4, 2027.

Two other wrongful-death claims

In recent years, two other families have sued Parkridge and Care Initiatives, alleging wrongful death:

In August 2024, the family of the late Kerry Morris sued, alleging that Morris died at age 58, one week after being admitted to Parkridge for what was supposed to be a temporary stay to assist with recovery from a leg amputation. The lawsuit claims that on the evening of Aug. 23, 2022, two nurses failed to respond to a certified nurse aide’s request that they come to the assistance of Morris, who was in respiratory distress at the time.

In March 2025, with Care Initiatives attempting to force the matter into arbitration, the parties reached a settlement in the case and the lawsuit was dismissed with no public disclosure of the terms of the deal.

In June 2024, the family of Neuang Boun Sisamouth sued Parkridge and Care Initiatives, alleging that on June 20, 2022, the staff at Parkridge failed to respond to her deteriorating condition, despite dangerously low blood sugar levels. Licensed Practical Nurse Dezaree Major failed to call 911 as ordered, and there was a 90-minute delay in transporting Sisamouth to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead a short time later, the lawsuit claims. A trial is scheduled for March 29, 2027.

In 2022, the Iowa Board of Nursing alleged Major was working at an unspecified Iowa nursing home in 2021 where, for five months, she falsified various medical records and performed nursing services beyond the scope of her license.