Lawsuit against Palm Desert area elderly care facility alleges elder abuse

A lawsuit alleges that a caretaker at Sunbrook Residential Care in La Quinta murdered and tortured an 87-year-old man. The lawsuit alleges elder abuse, negligence and wrongful death. The lawsuit names the facility and its owners as defendants.

The man’s body was found in a trash can at Sunbrook in November 2019. The caretaker has been charged with murder and torture.

The man’s death involved a knife, box cutter, screwdriver and hammer, according to a criminal complaint’s allegations. The caretaker has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail, according to jail records.

The caretaker could be sentenced to death if she is convicted due to the torture charge.

The lawsuit also seeks to recover damages based on intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract and negligent hiring among other causes of action.

The lawsuit claims the man, a Korean War veteran, was admitted to Sunbrook for assisted living care. The facility, because of the man’s condition, knew he “was unable to provide for his own basic needs and was dependent on them for medical care and health services, the provision of safety and assistance devices to prevent accidents, and the implementation of interventions to prevent falls,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims Sunbrook was duty-bound to give the man care including assistance with grooming, bathing, toileting, eating, dressing and other tasks.

The lawsuit claims the man’s condition meant he should have never been admitted into a residential care facility since he needed other people to “perform all activities of daily living for him.”

The lawsuit argues that the man was “subjected to abuse and neglect, torture, and ultimately untimely death” since the facility improperly admitted him and kept him, claiming the man was admitted “merely for profits” without much consideration “that he was not appropriate for a non-medical facility.”

The lawsuit claims that the defendants “simply abandoned him and left him with a single caregiver who was neither qualified nor in the right mind to care for him” after he was admitted.

The lawsuit also accuses the facility’s owners of understaffing and underfunding Sunbrook “in a deliberate effort to increase their profitability by reducing labor costs at the expense of patient care.”

The facility’s owners had their licenses for all three facilities they operated in the valley earlier in 2020, according to Department of Social Services documents.

These documents illustrate further abuse, such as a resident being “dropped during a routine transfer,” fracturing her tailbone. That woman was diagnosed with 18 pressure wounds, some needing surgery, and died the next month.

A lawsuit soon followed regarding that woman, alleging elder abuse. Documents show Community Care Licensing officials discovered that it took days for the facility to take the woman to the hospital after she broke her tailbone.

About the author

Jeffrey Nadrich is the managing partner of Nadrich & Cohen, LLP, a Palm Desert personal injury law firm which represents elder abuse clients.