Victims hurt due to negligence at a drug treatment center may earn additional support through punitive damages.
Punitive damages are an extra punishment for grossly negligent rehab facilities that put their patients at extreme risk. Negligence may involve owners cutting staffing to low levels and allowing patients to come to harm.
Punitive damages are meant to penalize the facility. However, the fines paid are given to the victim and the victim’s family.
California Law and Punitive Damages
Punitive Damages are used in rare cases, but are sometimes directed toward extremely negligent drug rehab facility owners. They are financial penalties meant to punish facilities for engaging in extremely reckless behavior towards patients.
That can include firing staff members to boost profit margins.
The California Civil Code (CCC) goes into when punitive damages are considered by a judge and jury:
“(a) In an action for the breach of an obligation not arising from contract, where it is proven by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant has been guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice, the plaintiff, in addition to the actual damages, may recover damages for the sake of example and by way of punishing the defendant.”
As the final part of that subsection states, the punitive damages aren’t levied for the benefit of the victim. They are meant to:
- Add financial punishment for the facility owner
- Discourage the facility owner from ever engaging in such “malice” again
- Discourage other rehab facilities from engaging in similar behavior
Victims can still earn money through a traditional personal injury case or a medical malpractice case. However, punitive damages are added separately and are above any compensation or judgment the family receives.
See: Do I have a case?
Who Gets the Money from Punitive Damages?
Fortunately, the punitive damages fines that drug treatment centers pay go to the patients who have been hurt. In a wrongful death case, they can go to family members who have lost a loved one to an overdose.
This can add a substantial amount of support for victims, but it’s important to point out again that punitive damages aren’t common. A skilled attorney can file a motion to have punitive damages considered.
If approved, a jury would often consider an award for the victim’s injury first, and then consider if punitive damages would be issued and for how much. Punitive damages could be awarded for acts of negligence involving understaffing and especially the lack of monitoring that a reduced staff can cause.
Signs of Understaffing at a Drug Treatment Center
Showing the signs of neglect and carelessness at a facility may be difficult due to the roadblocks that will go up. Lawyers working for the parent company or corporation will try to shut down access to important documents, video footage, and important numbers.
An experienced attorney might be a necessary advantage to get aggressive and put pressure on facilities to release important proof of what happened.
An attorney would demand access to these and other pieces of evidence of the consequences of understaffing:
- Staffing records, and hiring and firing records.
- Patient logs showing how long patients went between bed checks and drug searches due to a lack of qualified staff.
- Time stamps confirming how long victims had to wait to be found after going into cardiac arrest, suffering an assault, or overdosing on a drug.
- Video surveillance and visitor logs showing how easily patients got access to a drug like Fentanyl due to a lack of security staffing.
- Medication records showing how prescriptions weren’t administered or given to the wrong patients.
- The final report from an internal investigation on how a patient got injured or suffered a fatal accident.
- Demonstrating how long employees went without training and supervision.
Proof like this can convince a judge or jury of just how much danger corporate owners exposed vulnerable patients to for the sake of profits.
A skilled attorney can make sure this evidence isn’t concealed and that the court has the full story of what happened, and how understaffing contributed. A strong case built around these elements gives patients a great chance to earn compensation for their medical bills and lost income, and perhaps a chance at collecting punitive damages.
Contact a Lawyer If Your Loved One Got Hurt at California Rehab.
Attorney Martin Gasparian offers a free, confidential consultation to families who had a loved one who was injured or died at a California drug rehab facility. There’s never any obligation for this informational session.
It’s a no-risk opportunity to find out how to hold facility owners fully responsible for understaffing a rehab and allowing a defenseless patient to get hurt.
Call us today or fill out a free case review form.