Widow of man who suffered up to 40 falls at care home in Cornwall is awarded £28k
Clarke Willmott acted for woman whose husband suffered a broken leg while resident at care home in Cornwall.
The widow of an elderly man who suffered up to 40 falls – including one in which he suffered a broken leg – at a care home in Cornwall has been awarded £28,000 in an out-of-court settlement.
Mr. E had been living with his wife at home until 2017 and had been at Trevaylor Manor care home, at Gulval near Penzance, after being diagnosed with severe dementia.
In April 2020 Mr. E broke his femur in a fall at the home, which required surgery. He never regained his mobility and was reliant on a hoist and wheelchair up until his death at the age of 87 in June 2022.
An internal investigation found that Mr. E had suffered a total of 40 falls over a three-and-a-half-year period at the home, most of them occurring between December 2018 and April 2020.
Trevaylor Manor is operated by Swallowcourt, which runs four other homes for elderly people and those with special needs in Cornwall: The Poldhu in Mullion, Ponsandane in Penzance, Station Villa in Hayle and Cross Keys in Penryn.
Swallowcourt eventually settled the case in May this year, agreeing to pay Mrs. E a sum of £28,000.
Mrs. E was represented by Vanessa Harris, a senior associate in national law firm Clarke Willmott’s clinical negligence team in Bristol.
“Mr. E had received respite care since 2012 but his condition had deteriorated, and he’d been a full-time care home resident since April 2017. In May 2018 he was moved to Trevaylor Care Home to receive more specialised dementia care,” said Vanessa Harris.
“In April 2020 Mr. E fell, fracturing his femur. He was admitted to hospital and surgery was undertaken to repair the fracture but unfortunately, following discharge from hospital, he never regained his mobility and was reliant on a hoist and wheelchair up until his death in June 2022.
“The fact that the fall happened during the Covid-19 lockdown period, with his family not being able to visit him, caused a great deal of additional anxiety to the family.”
Following receipt of supportive expert evidence, the claim was presented to Swallowcourt in November 2022.
Vanessa Harris said that eventually, in August last year, Swallowcourt admitted breach of duty in relation to the 2020 fall, without fully addressing the allegations. The admission was a single line email admitting breach of duty “subject to causation”. Despite requests for clarification of the position on causation no further response was received from Swallowcourt.
A barrister was then instructed to draft a claim and issue proceedings, after which Swallowcourt filed a defence arguing that Mr. E was elderly and suffering from various co-morbidities, and that he may have suffered repeated falls anyway, regardless of whether or not he was being closely monitored. It accepted that following return to the care home his mobility had decreased but did not accept that the fall in April 2020 was causative of the decreased mobility.
Despite the denial in relation to causation, the Defendant put forward an offer of settlement in the sum of £28,000, which was accepted.
“The family had raised their concerns about other falls that Mr. E had suffered and an internal investigation found that he had fallen 40 times – and that not all of them had been documented,” said Vanessa.
“Another of the criticisms from our own expert was that there didn’t appear to have been the proper level of escalation after his fall in 2020, because Mr. E clearly required one-to-one care in order to get mobile.
“There was clearly a general lack of care and the fall in which Mr. E broke his leg was significant – there had been no proper risk assessment and it was the overall culture at Trevaylor Manor that was the problem.
“We saw the final settlement as being broadly fair, but this was not a financial matter. The family merely wanted some sort of admission of failure from the defendant but they did not engage with us at all.
“I wrote to Trevaylor Manor multiple times giving them the chance to engage, but without success, and the whole process took three years from when we first made a claim. The fact that the defendant did not respond led to a whole year of additional litigation and costs that could easily have been avoided.”
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