Estate of Jones v. Mariner Health Care
| Decision Date | 16 March 2007 |
| Docket Number | No. 5D05-1214.,5D05-1214. |
| Citation | 955 So.2d 43 |
| Parties | ESTATE OF Clara B. JONES, etc., Appellant, v. MARINER HEALTH CARE OF DELAND, INC., et al., Appellees. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Susan B. Morrison, of Law Office of Susan B. Morrison, P.A. and Brian L. Thompson, John R. Cummings and Blair N. Mendes of Wilkes & McHugh, P.A., Tampa, for Appellant.
Michael R. D'Lugo and Richards H. Ford, of Wicker, Smith, O'Hara, McCoy, Graham & Ford, P.A., Orlando, for Appellee Mariner Health Care of DeLand.
No Appearance for other Appellees.
We review a final judgment and attendant order denying a motion for new trial emanating from an action filed by a nursing home patient, Clara B. Jones, alleging common law negligence and violations of the Nursing Home Residents' Act, which is a fitting sobriquet recently coined by the judiciary to specifically reference sections 400.22 and 400.23, Florida Statutes.1 Jones also claimed entitlement to punitive damages. The Estate of Clara B. Jones, which was substituted for Jones upon her death, contends that the final judgment rendered in favor of the defendants is erroneous and that a new trial is warranted because the trial court improperly limited the claims under the Act to violations that occurred after May 15, 2001.
The defendants in the underlying action, the appellees here, are: Mariner Health Care of Deland, Inc., which is the licensee of the nursing home facility where Jones resided from October 14, 1998, to June 30, 2001; Mariner Post Acute Networks, Inc. [MPAN], which is its corporate parent; Mariner Health Group, Inc. [MHG], a corporate entity that had previously merged with another corporation to form MPAN; and Merle Zinick, the administrator of the nursing home facility. For ease of reference, these defendants will be collectively referred to as "Mariner." Mariner argues that no error occurred, but if it did, it was harmless. We affirm in part and reverse in part.2
To resolve the issue before us, it is not necessary to parade the list of horribles alleged to have occurred to Jones while she was a resident of Mariner. It is enough for us to discuss the procedural background and chronicle certain incidents of alleged abuse and violations of the Act when necessary to determine whether error occurred and, if so, whether a new trial is warranted.
We begin with Jones' 1998 entry into the nursing home at the age of 86 for rehabilitation after hip surgery. At that time, she had a very large stage IV decubitus ulcer, was suffering from dementia, and needed assistance with her daily activities. Among other things, Jones had limited mobility and needed assistance with toileting. Further, she constantly cried throughout her stay and was unable to communicate. Despite her infirmities, she was expected to rehabilitate.
In January 1999, Jones suffered a fecal impaction for which she was successfully treated. She remained relatively healthy until June 2001, when the incident giving rise to this suit occurred. On June 15, 2001, she suffered a brown, watery emesis. No doctor was contacted because the staff felt it was an isolated incident. In fact, nothing happened again until June 30, 2001, when Jones again suffered another brown emesis. She had been eating well and having bowel movements.
The emesis was tested for the presence of blood, and the results were positive. Dr. Alstott was called, and he instructed that Jones needed to go to the hospital immediately. Upon arrival at the hospital, Dr. Capulong was called in for a consult. He noted contractures in her hips and knees just prior to performing a colostomy. He discovered that Jones had a perforated rectum and a massive fecal impaction the size of a football. Jones recovered well from the surgery and was released on July 10, 2001. She then changed nursing home facilities and resided at University Center East for another year and a half before her death on January 26, 2003.
Prior to her death, Jones filed suit against Mariner, through her daughter as guardian, claiming common law negligence and violation of her rights under the Act. She claimed that the nursing home (and vicariously MHG and MPAN) failed to provide adequate and appropriate health care, resulting in contractures and a fecal impaction requiring surgery. Unfortunately, Jones died before trial, and it therefore became necessary for the personal representative to continue the lawsuit.
Shortly before the trial commenced, the Florida Supreme Court issued its opinion in Knowles v. Beverly Enterprises-Florida, Inc., 898 So.2d 1 (Fla.2004), which held that a personal representative could not bring a claim under the 1997 version of section 400.023(1) when the alleged violation did not cause the resident's death. Based on this ruling, Mariner moved to strike all of the claims under the Act, arguing that the personal representative was proceeding against Mariner for alleged violations that were admittedly not causally related to Jones' death. The trial court struggled with its decision but ultimately ruled that Knowles applied and that the claims under the Act would be limited to the allegations that occurred after May 15, 2001. This date became a component of the trial court's ruling because the Legislature amended section 400.023(1), effective on that date, to eliminate death as a causal factor when a personal representative brings a claim under the Act.3 Because Jones entered the hospital on June 30, 2001, and did not return to Mariner, the trial court's ruling, in essence, restricted the Estate's claim under this statute to the last 45 days of Jones' residency at the nursing home. Further, the negligence claims were restricted to the time period between October 14, 1998, and May 15, 2001.
The case proceeded to trial and was presented to the jury in that posture. The trial court directed a verdict for MHG and Merle Zinick, and the jury returned a verdict finding that the other two defendants were not liable. The trial court denied the Estate's motion for new trial and the Estate appealed.
In order to determine whether the trial court erred in limiting the Estate's claims under the Act to infringements that occurred after May 15, 2001, we must examine the pertinent statutory provisions. The question thus becomes a matter of statutory interpretation requiring application of the de novo standard of review. See Velez v. Miami-Dade County Police Dep't, 934 So.2d 1162, 1164 (Fla.2006); Kephart v. Hadi, 932 So.2d 1086, 1089 (Fla.2006) ().
The textual point marked for emphasis by the parties upon which we focus our attention is the part of the Act found in section 400.023(1) that states:
Any resident whose rights as specified in this part are deprived or infringed upon shall have a cause of action against any licensee responsible for the violation. The action may be brought by the resident or his or her guardian, by a person or organization acting on behalf of a resident with the consent of the resident or his or her guardian, or by the personal representative of the estate of a deceased resident when the cause of death resulted from the deprivation or infringement of the decedent's rights.
§ 400.023(1), Fla. Stat. (1997) (emphasis added).
While the emboldened provision of the statute is clear and unambiguous, there was some debate as to whether its plain meaning was what the Legislature actually intended. The Florida Supreme Court addressed this issue in Knowles and concluded that the language of the statute is clear that "a personal representative of the estate of a deceased resident may bring a cause of action against a nursing home only when the death of the resident resulted from the deprivation or infringement of the decedent's rights." Knowles, 898 So.2d at 6. What is clear from even a casual reading of the decision in Knowles, besides, of course, its interpretation of section 400.023(1), is that if the supreme court had the power to rewrite the statute with sensible design, it would have done so in a way that deleted the requirement that a personal representative can bring suit only if he or she shows that the alleged statutory violation caused the patient's death, much as the Legislature did when it amended the statute in 2001. But just as the supreme court could not rewrite the statute to delete that which the Legislature specifically and clearly included, the courts cannot rewrite the statute by inserting that which the Legislature did not include. We believe the trial court violated the latter prohibition by interpreting the statute, via the Knowles decision, to mean that a personal representative could neither bring nor maintain an action filed by the nursing resident prior to death unless the death was caused by a statutory violation.
The supreme court in Knowles explained that "because this is a legislatively created cause of action to be brought by personal representatives only under certain circumstances, we conclude the Legislature had the authority both to determine the extent of the statutory right and to prescribe or limit the remedies available for a violation of the right." Id. at 9. The manner in which the Legislature did that was to prohibit a personal representative from bringing a suit unless death was a causal factor. Nowhere does the Legislature state or express its intention that a personal representative be prohibited from maintaining a suit previously filed by the patient or guardian of a patient who dies during the pendency of the litigation. Unlike the trial court, we do not consider the terms "bring" and "maintain" to be synonymous within this statutory context of section 400.023(1). "Bring" generally means to cause to exist or occur, while "maintain" means to sustain or continue. Merriam Webster's...
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