Chattanooga Nursing Home Prima Facie Cases

While they are easily accepted and demonstrated in court, Chattanooga nursing home prima facie cases could still be disproven by an experienced defense team. Because of this, it is critical for the loved ones or victims of nursing home abuse to have an equally experienced attorney ready to represent them in court. Our loved ones deserve the respect that is standard for everyone in nursing homes. Anything less is substandard and potentially negligent.

How Prima Facie Applies to Nursing Home Abuse Claims

Prima facie translates legally to accepting a claim as true until proven otherwise.  In the context of a nursing home abuse case, a prima facie case requires that the plaintiff prove that there was either abuse or neglect, some sort of action or inaction that falls below the standard of care that applies to a nursing home, and also that that abuse, neglect, or substandard care caused some injury or harm to the patient or to the specific person. It includes either an intentional act or the violation of a duty which causes foreseeable harm to the victim.

How Chattanooga Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers Establish a Prima Facie Case of Negligence

To establish a prima facie case of negligence in a nursing home in Chattanooga, an attorney would prove what the duties of the nursing home were. Attorneys prove exactly what nursing home personnel were supposed to do and how they failed to meet their duties. Abuse in a prima facie case could include:

And an attorney must prove that that failure or that action on the part of the nursing home caused the injury, that the injury to the patient was foreseeable, and that the patient suffered damages or injuries as a result of that conduct or sub-standard care.

An Example of a Prima Facie Case

An example of a prima facie case is that a nursing home is required to implement some sort of procedures or other modalities to keep a nursing home patient from developing bedsores if that nursing home patient is not able to get out of bed. The attorney proves that they are required to turn and reposition the patient every two hours, and they prove that the nursing home employee failed to turn and reposition the patient or provide whatever other modality he or she should have provided.

A lawyer proves that that failure to turn the patient caused a bedsore and that the bedsore was harmful and caused damage to the plaintiff. The burden of proof required to disprove any liability would then fall to the defendant in a case like this.

How Prima Facie Cases Are Treated in Court

A prima facie claim is what is required to keep the court from dismissing the case. If an individual cannot make out a prima facie case, the court dismisses the claim. So, it carries enough weight to get one to a jury trial where attorneys get to put on all of the evidence and have a jury weigh the negligence or the abuse and the damages in the case.

Reach Out to an Attorney Who Could Help Today

When we place a loved one in the care of a nursing home, we trust that the staff are adequately trained, well equipped to deal with reasonably foreseeable issues, and give our loved ones the standard of care they need. However, when abuse is obvious and neglect easily demonstrated, loved ones of the victims could bring a claim against the nursing home to court. Chattanooga nursing home prima facie cases are treated as evidence in court and disproving them typically falls to the defendants. However, a defense team could allege that they did nothing wrong. For this, it is important to have the service of an experienced lawyer. Call today for a confidential case review.