California drug rehab facilities are responsible for the care and safety of all patients.

That includes the duty to keep them in a safe environment and to prevent them from walking out the front door undetected and into danger.

If there is a patient elopement (running away) and the patient dies while outside the facility, rehab owners can be held liable for their negligence.

Elopement Dangers for Drug Rehab Residents

Families check their loved ones into a drug treatment center so they can be monitored through withdrawal and have a drug-free, safe environment to recover in.

Of course, if they manage to slip away from a facility, all of that security is gone. And in fact, patients may be at more risk than when they entered.

• They may be at a critical point in detox.
• Dangerous withdrawal symptoms could prove deadly while the patient has no medical staff to rely on.
• Patients may have other health issues, like seizures, that go untreated while they are MIA.
• They may have nowhere to go once outside and end up facing dangers on the street, such as assault.
• Elopement can be especially dangerous for minors allowed to escape from a juvenile drug treatment center.
• They can connect with old sources of drugs.
• A deadly overdose may be more likely. Patients who have stopped taking a drug like Fentanyl can lose their resistance. With a reduced tolerance, they can experience a much more dangerous overdose.

Any harm that occurs to a loved one while they are out on the street can still leave a drug rehab facility liable for a wrongful death. Families can seek support for funeral costs, their emotional loss in the years ahead, and the income the deceased may have provided to support the family.

Who Is Responsible for Drug Rehab Runaway Death?

When drug rehab centers admit patients, they have a medical responsibility to provide a secure environment for their recovery. Patients are vulnerable and must receive constant monitoring from a staff that can react to any withdrawal complications or an overdose.

Facilities can promise this type of care to families, but often fail quickly in the care of patients and the duty to keep them safe from drug exposure. Patients will require that type of safe environment to have the best chance of recovery. But when facilities fail in keeping patients on the property, they can’t control the environment, and the progress towards recovery can be lost.

These are just a few of the reasons a drug rehab facility owner may be liable for an elopement and fatal outcome:

• Surveillance video showing a lack of security.
• Visitor logs. Security lapses that allowed someone to enter a facility to remove a patient.
• Monitoring logs that show a failure to conduct regular bed checks. Evidence of just how long a patient’s absence went unnoticed.
• Intake documents showing clinical staff failed to identify a flight risk.
• Phone records. Negligence in reporting an eloped patient missing. A failure to call 911.

Rehab owners are liable for the harm that comes to patients who are in a facility or manage to get outside. But they also have corporate lawyers ready to try to discredit victims and leave families with nothing. They can try to blame the victim for running off, but it’s actually the staff’s responsibility to prevent patients from harming themselves.

Evidence will be key, and an experienced lawyer can greatly help with building a strong case. Facilities will work to restrict access to internal documents, security footage, and medication records, but an aggressive lawyer can request these details and make sure they aren’t swept under the rug.

Contact Us if a California Rehab Facility Caused Your Loved One Harm.

Attorney Martin Gasparian offers a free, confidential consultation to all families who lost a loved one at a California rehab facility or after elopement. He wants to stand with you when you may be the only person who thinks a facility failed your loved one.

Call us today or fill out a free case review form. There’s no obligation, but if you need our help, we don’t charge your family anything upfront. If you hire us, we are only paid if we win the case for you. Then our fee comes out of the settlement check that a negligent facility must write for your family.