In cases involving the death of a patient, families can still file and often win lawsuits against negligent drug rehab facilities, even if a waiver was signed.
Waivers can protect facilities for some common risks that come with drug rehab recovery and treatment. However, when owners allow care to become extremely negligent and put patients at unnecessary risk, they can be financially liable for the consequences.
A skilled attorney can help family members seek justice for a loved one and take on facilities that try to hide behind patient waivers.
To find out what’s possible, take advantage of a free case consultation. Call us today or fill out a free case review form.
The Waivers Signed at a Drug Rehab Clinic
California drug treatment centers can ask patients or their family members to sign several documents during check-in.
They can be asked to sign consent forms, risk acknowledgement forms, and patient release of information forms.
Waiver forms often become important because they offer some legal protection from rehab parent companies when patients suffer injury from expected dangers during detox, withdrawal, and discharge.
Detox and relapses bring certain health dangers that a rehab facility may not be liable for. However, a waiver isn’t a complete shield for facilities.
Families may think that the waiver prevents them from holding careless staff members responsible for an overdose death accident. They may even be told this. But in many cases, it’s not true.
When Waivers Don’t Protect Drug Rehab Owners
Waivers are meant to offer some protection to facilities that are treating patients already at risk. However, waivers are not meant to excuse staff members who contribute to recovery challenges that patients face and cause harm.
That might include a case where an unsecured facility allows patients to get access to dangerous drugs. It might involve a staff member not checking on a patient frequently enough to notice an overdose and react. Doctors and nurses on staff can also be liable, despite a strong medical waiver that’s been signed.
These and other factors may erase the legal protection a waiver provides:
- Gross negligence – Waiver forms do not excuse facilities when they take extreme risks with a patient’s care. Examples may include an owner who slashes staffing to unsafe levels to increase profits.
- Medical Malpractice – Some healthcare risks are covered in waivers, but facilities and their medical staff are still liable for harm stemming from substandard care and medical mistakes, like medication errors.
- Intentional Abuse – A waiver does not excuse a facility that allows the sexual, physical, or emotional abuse of patients.
- Fraud – Waivers don’t protect when rehab centers are guilty of fraud. This might include “patient brokering” where facilities pay recruiters to send patients to them. They may not be qualified to handle all of these patients. A facility may also do too little to prevent relapses, simply to keep patients longer for more insurance money.
Informed Consent for Drug Rehab Patients
A waiver could also be meaningless if a patient didn’t give informed consent. Informed consent is a requirement when signing these types of documents.
The patient or a guardian may sign off on a waiver. However, for it to be legally binding, the patient must understand the rights they are releasing and the dangers involved with their treatment. The possible risks, benefits, and alternatives must be fully explained to victims and their families.
Informed Consent is a standard upheld by federal law and is covered in state law.
California Code of Regulations CCR Tit. 22, § 70707 – Patients’ Rights
“(5) Receive as much information about any proposed treatment or procedure as the patient may need in order to give informed consent or to refuse this course of treatment. Except in emergencies, this information shall include a description of the procedure or treatment, the medically significant risks involved in this treatment, alternate courses of treatment or nontreatment and the risks involved in each and to know the name of the person who will carry out the procedure or treatment.”
The consent patients give on an “assumption of risk” form must be fully explained. A skilled attorney could file a strong negligence claim after proving that a patient or guardian did not have their legal rights fully explained.
Support for Grieving Families After an Overdose is Allowed
Families may have no choice but to take on a negligent drug rehab facility hiding behind a waiver clause. They may have an expensive burial to pay for, just days after a tragic death.
They could also suddenly be in a financial hole if the victim had supported the family with weekly paychecks. Those paychecks come to a sudden end, leaving families to struggle to make rent or mortgage payments, car payments, and even to find money to feed and care for children.
An experienced lawyer could help work around waiver protection and demand these and other benefits for families in mourning:
- Help with paying for a funeral service and burial
- Hospital bills and ambulance fees built up while the victim was still alive
- Replacement of income lost now and in the future
- Support for the loss of companionship and care families must endure in future years
- Punitive damages to punish an extremely careless rehab facility for allowing an overdose (these are rarely issued, but the fines paid by the facility do go to the family members)
Contact Us if a California Rehab Facility Allowed Drug Dealers to Harm Your Loved One.
Attorney Martin Gasparian offers a free, confidential consultation to families who lost a loved one at a negligent California drug treatment center.
It’s a no-risk way for families to see all of their options and to determine what type of support they can demand from negligent drug rehab owners and operators.
Call us today or fill out a free case review form. If you do need legal representation, you don’t have to worry about meeting the cost of a lawyer. You can hire us without any upfront money. We are only paid if we win for your family. Then our fee comes out of the settlement check earned.