A prominent Chicago personal injury law firm has indicated it intends to hit the state of Illinois with numerous lawsuits over a wave of deaths amid a COVID-19 outbreak at an Illinois veterans care home under the supervision of directors appointed by Gov. JB Pritzker.
Attorneys from the firm of Levin & Perconti in Chicago announced on May 4 that they now represent “more than a dozen families whose loved ones died from COVID-19” at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home last fall.
To date, Levin & Perconti has filed just one lawsuit over the deaths. That case was filed on April 5 on behalf of the family of Richard Cieski Sr., a 90-year-old Korean War veteran.
Michael Bonamarte
| Levin & Perconti
However, they said more such lawsuits will be forthcoming. All cases will need to be filed in the Illinois Court of Claims in Springfield, under state law.
Any further lawsuits will follow a report issued by the Illinois Department of Human Services Office of the Inspector General, which blasted the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the Pritzker administration for the handling of a large COVID outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans Home in November.
In that outbreak, three dozen residents died at the nursing home. The facility is run by the state government to provide care to aging and infirmed veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces.
The Inspector General’s report faulted the Pritzker-appointed leadership at the department and the facility for failing to properly train staff and implement policies and procedures to prevent and respond to such an outbreak.
The outbreak has already led to the sacking of former Veterans Affairs Director Linda Chapa Lavia. Pritzker appointed Chapa Lavia, a former Democratic state representative from suburban Aurora, to the post.
In comments following the release of the report, Pritzker said he would not have appointed Chapa Lavia if “I knew then what I know now,” of Chapa Lavia’s actual leadership abilities. The governor said he appointed her, in part, because the former Democratic state lawmaker had led investigatory efforts into an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at a state veterans home in Quincy under former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
The Pritzker campaign had used that investigation into the Quincy outbreak to hammer Rauner in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
Now, as a result of what the Inspector General found to be a complete failure of leadership at the LaSalle Veterans Home, the state faces the prospect of dozens of lawsuits from the families of those who died in LaSalle.
Attorneys from Levin & Perconti, who have built their practice on lawsuits against nursing homes, said the conditions at the LaSalle home were “very much consistent with what we’ve seen at other facilities where these massive outbreaks happened.”
“There are well-documented ways to protect nursing home residents from infection, clearly outlined in federal guidelines, but when leaders fail to put those protocols into practice with adequate policies, procedures and training, we see the devastating consequences of those failures,” said attorney Michael Bonamarte, of Levin & Perconti. “These are predictable and preventable tragedies.”
In a release announcing the forthcoming spate of lawsuits against the state, Bonamarte said his firm will use lawsuits to “to hold the responsible IDVA leaders and managers accountable for their failure to protect the elderly veterans in their care.”
“These Illinois veterans and their loved ones deserved better,” Bonamarte said.