Jury awards $6 million in nursing home neglect case against Lynwood Manor in Adrian

ADRIAN — A jury last month awarded what's believed to be the largest verdict in Lenawee County history to the family of a Brooklyn woman who died after becoming severely dehydrated at an Adrian nursing home.

After a seven-day trial in Lenawee County Circuit Court, the jury ordered CRG Lynwood LLC, the owner of Lynwood Manor, to pay $2,000,000 to the estate of Gwendolyn Taggart and $4,000,000 to her four daughters for the loss of their mother. The jury deliberated for about an hour and a half.

"It's a horrible, tragic situation," the plaintiff's attorney, Bruce Inosencio of Jackson, said. "But we are glad for the family that it's over."

In an Instagram post, Inosencio's law firm called the verdict "a monumental victory for justice" and described the $6 million total as "groundbreaking" and the $4 million to Taggart's daughters as "extraordinary."

"As far as we know, it's the largest verdict ever in Lenawee County," Inosencio said.

The case could have resolved without a trial, he said, but "the insurance defense attorneys fought us on this every step of the way."

"Why did we do this? Why did we keep up this fight? Well, the community needs to know," Inosencio said. "And I want that place to either be closed, or I want their policies to change. They need to take better care of people. They're getting paid a lot of money to take care of people, and they're just not doing it properly."

Taggart, 87, died Nov. 17, 2017. She was at Lynwood Manor in September 2017 to recover from a stroke and had a tracheostomy to help her breathe, Inosencio said. While there, the staff was supposed to monitor her for dehydration, with one of the symptoms being constipation. She went 10 days without a normal bowel movement, then another 17 days before she was taken across the street to ProMedica Bixby Hospital. She'd lost more than 5% of her body weight in 30 days.

"When you have not had a bowel movement after three days, the standard of care says that there needs to be some type of intervention," Inosencio said.

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At Bixby, lab tests were ordered and Taggart was found to have severe dehydration and severe fecal impaction, he said. Those conditions led to the brain injury, toxic metabolic encephalopathy, that caused her death, the Instagram post said.

"That doesn't just happen overnight," Inosencio said. "What they should have done is they should have contacted the doctor when she lost more than 5% of her body weight in less than 30 days. ... And they should have contacted a doctor when she was showing signs of dehydration through constipation, by not having a bowel movement in three days. They did nothing. They never contacted a doctor to discuss that. There's no record of that."

He said they didn't sue Lynwood's attending physician because there was no record he was contacted.

"What did he do wrong? He didn't even know," Inosencio said.

"Part of the problem was that their own internal policies, at least based on the testimony that was provided by their witnesses, their policies do not align with the standard of care," Inosencio said. "The standard of care requires contact(ing) the doctor. That's not what they do. They testified that's not what we do. And that's part of the problem."

"It's just that it's terribly sad because it's preventable," he added. "She wasn't going there to die. She was there for stroke rehab. She's supposed to go home."

Inosencio said he expects Lynwood's attorneys will appeal, though he doesn't know what the basis would be. He said after the trial, jurors hugged Taggart's daughter, Patricia Hoag, and said "they felt it was very straightforward that Lynwood was negligent. That's their terms, not mine."

Inosencio also said Judge Michael R. Olsaver "did a very nice job with a very delicate set of facts" and "did a very nice job of handling … lot of difficult legal issues."

The Daily Telegram contacted one of Lynwood's attorneys but did not receive a response.

— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Jury awards $6 million in lawsuit against Lynwood Manor in Adrian