Nursing home abuse and neglect can leave a resident with serious physical injuries, lasting emotional harm, and financial losses a family did not expect to face. Most families come to us before they know for certain that any of it has happened. What they have is a bruise nobody can account for, a pressure sore that should not have developed, or a parent who has declined noticeably since the last visit.
Determining whether that amounts to a claim is the first thing we do, and it costs you nothing.
These types of cases are commonly established through the facility’s own records. Care plans, staffing rosters, medication administration records and incident reports show whether the required standard of care was met. They also become more difficult to obtain as time passes.
At PKSD we represent residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Las Cruces, Doña Ana County and across New Mexico, from our office on Missouri Avenue. Partner Jeff Pitman is certified as a Civil Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy and is a member of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association.
No upfront costs. No risks. Call 575-213-8073 today.
What Our Clients Are Saying
How Do I Know if I Have a Nursing Home Abuse Case?
A claim generally requires four things. The facility owed your loved one a duty of care, which it did the moment it admitted them. It failed to meet that duty. That failure caused harm. And the harm produced losses that can be measured.
Most families can speak to the first and the third. What they cannot see is the second, because it lives in the facility’s own documentation. That is the part we establish.
What we ask in the first conversation
- Which facility, and how long your loved one has been there
- What you noticed, and when
- What the facility said caused it
- Whether you raised it, who with, and what happened afterward
- What treatment your loved one has needed since
You do not need documents or answers to all of it. If we do not believe there is a case, we will tell you, and that costs you nothing.
What Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Look Like
Abuse and neglect are different, and the distinction matters to a claim. Abuse is deliberate. Neglect is a failure to provide care that was required, and it is more common, harder to spot, and frequently more damaging because it continues for months before anyone notices.
Neglect
- Bed and pressure sores, which develop when a resident is not repositioned
- Falls, where the risk was known and nothing was done about it
- Malnutrition and dehydration
- Medication given late, wrongly, or not at all
- Untreated infections
- A resident left unwashed, or in soiled clothing
- Wandering out of a facility that should have been secured
Abuse
- Physical harm inflicted by staff or another resident
- Verbal threats, humiliation, or deliberate isolation
- Sexual contact of any kind
- Chemical restraint, meaning sedation used for staff convenience rather than a medical reason
- Theft, or pressure on a resident over money, cards, a will or power of attorney
Almost all of it traces back to the same cause. A facility that does not have enough people on shift cannot turn residents, answer call lights, supervise a corridor or check that medication was taken. Understaffing is a budget decision, and it is usually made above the level of the people a family meets.
Case Results
Verdict
$11,000,000
Wrongful Death
Verdict
$3,400,000
Nursing Home Wrongful Death
Settlement
$3,000,000
Wrongful Death
What Happens to the Arbitration Agreement You Signed at Admission?
Somewhere in the paperwork signed when your loved one was admitted there is almost certainly an arbitration agreement. It was handed over with everything else during a difficult day, and most families do not remember signing it. Facilities rely on it later to keep a claim out of court.
It does not always work, and New Mexico law on why comes partly from a case this firm brought.
In Peavy v. Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc., the New Mexico Supreme Court looked at an agreement that sent residents’ claims to arbitration while carving out collections and discharge disputes, which are the claims a facility is most likely to bring, so those could still go to court. In April 2020 the Court held that when a drafting party excludes its own likeliest claims while requiring the other side to arbitrate theirs, a presumption of unfair and unreasonable one-sidedness arises, and the facility then has to justify it. The defendants in Peavy could not. The agreement was held substantively unconscionable. PKSD represented the Peavy family.
What we look for in your admission paperwork
- Who signed it, and whether they had authority to bind the resident
- Whether the resident was well enough at admission to understand it
- Whether the facility carved out its own likeliest claims, as in Peavy
- Whether it was explained at all, or simply included in the stack
- Whether it caps recovery or shifts costs onto the resident
If you still have the admission paperwork, bring it with you. If you cannot find it, or you never had a copy, that is not a problem. Tell us the facility and we will get it. What matters is that you do not decide on your own that signing that form ended it, because in many cases it does not.
What Determines The Value of a Las Cruces Nursing Home Abuse Case?
In many instances, families are curious to know the answer to this question and no honest lawyer can provide one early. What we can explain is what moves it.
How badly your loved one was harmed, and for how long. A pressure sore that healed is a different case from one that reached bone and took a year. Harm that continued for months because nobody noticed is worth more than a single incident, and it is also easier to prove, because it leaves a longer paper trail.
What the records show. The burden of proof sits with the family. A case where the staffing roster contradicts the facility’s account, or where the care plan required something that never happened, is worth considerably more than one resting on what a family observed during visits.
Whether the facility knew. A first-time failure and a failure the facility had already been cited for are not valued the same. The second involves a decision not to fix something.
Whether your loved one survived. Where neglect or abuse contributed to a death, the claim becomes a wrongful death claim, brought for the estate and surviving family, with its own rules and its own deadline.
Who owned the facility. Where staffing was kept low as a matter of company policy rather than one bad month, the conduct may support punitive damages. Those are not paid to compensate anyone. They exist to punish the operator and deter others.
What is recoverable covers medical costs, the expense of moving a resident somewhere safer, money taken in cases of financial exploitation, and the harm that carries no invoice: pain, distress, loss of dignity, and the life your loved one should have had.
Who Is Actually Responsible?
Families usually start by suspecting one person, often the aide who was on shift. Sometimes that is correct. However, it may also be possible the aide was the last link in a chain that started somewhere else.
Ask how the failure happened rather than who was standing there. A resident who developed a pressure sore was not repositioned. Why not? Frequently because one aide was covering more residents than anyone could manage. Who decided how many staff were on that floor? Not the aide.
That question usually leads past the facility to whoever owns it. Many New Mexico facilities are owned by regional or national operators who set staffing budgets, care standards and how complaints are handled. Where the same failures show up across a company’s locations, the case stops being about one building.
PKSD has argued this point through the New Mexico appellate courts. In Collado v. Fiesta Park Healthcare, a jury found a skilled nursing facility and its management companies liable for the neglect of a 90-year-old resident who developed infected pressure sores and died of pneumonia, awarding $11 million, including $6 million in punitive damages. The defendants challenged the finding that the facility, its management company and its payroll company operated as a joint venture. The Court of Appeals addressed that question in 2022.
A claim can name several parties at once: the facility, the individual staff involved, the administrators responsible for oversight, the parent company, and outside contractors or medical providers with access to your loved one. Where one resident harmed another, the claim is against the facility, because residents with a known history of aggression are supposed to be assessed and supervised.
Identifying everyone responsible early matters, because each may carry separate insurance.
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How Can I Spot Abuse or Neglect of a Loved One in a Nursing Home?
Neglect is easier to miss than abuse, because it shows up as decline rather than injury, and decline is what families are told to expect anyway.
On your loved one
- Bruising, particularly on the arms, back or inner thighs, or in places clothing covers
- Any sore on the heels, hips, tailbone or shoulders, which should not develop in a facility that repositions residents
- Weight loss, cracked lips, or confusion that comes and goes, which can indicate dehydration
- Repeated infections, especially urinary tract infections
- Falls the facility cannot explain, or explains differently each time
- Sudden drowsiness or flatness, which can indicate sedation rather than illness
- Poor hygiene, dirty clothing, or long uncut nails
In how they behave
- Withdrawal, or reluctance to speak while staff are present
- Fear or agitation around a particular person
- Not wanting to be left alone with someone
In the facility
- Call lights ringing for long periods
- A different agency face every visit
- Staff who cannot tell you when your loved one last ate, was washed, or was moved
- Reluctance to let you see the chart, or to answer in writing
- Explanations that change between visits
Families who visit regularly notice a difference before anyone documents one. If something looks wrong and the answer you get does not fit what you are seeing, that is worth acting on rather than waiting for the next visit to confirm it.
Pitman, Kalkhoff, Sicula & Dentice is pleased to meet BBB accreditation standards. The firm is committed to providing the highest quality service to all of its clients.
What Should I Do if I Suspect Elder Abuse or Neglect?
If your loved one is in danger right now, call 911.
Beyond that, New Mexico law is clearer than many people may expect. Under the Adult Protective Services Act at NMSA § 27-7-30, any person with reasonable cause to believe an incapacitated adult is being abused, neglected or exploited must report it. Not just doctors and nurses. Anyone. Financial institutions are named specifically, which matters where a resident’s money is involved.
Failing to report, or obstructing an investigation, is a misdemeanor under that section, and the department can assess a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation.
How to report
APS Statewide Intake: 866-654-3219, staffed 24 hours a day. A report can be made by phone or in writing, and the reporter’s identity is generally protected. Include the resident’s name, age and address, who is responsible for their care, what their condition is, and what you have seen. You can also contact the long-term care ombudsman.
Reporting does not affect a claim
Families often hesitate here, worried that involving APS will slow down or damage a legal case. It does not. The two run separately. You can report, speak to police if you think a crime has occurred, and have a lawyer begin securing records, all at the same time.
Should you move your loved one?
Sometimes yes, and it is your decision to make rather than the facility’s. If you do, the cost of the move may be recoverable. Tell us before you move if you can, because a relocation makes it harder to establish what conditions were like, and there are steps worth taking first.
What Type of Evidence May Help Prove Abuse or Neglect?
The difficulty in these cases is that almost everything that proves them belongs to the facility. The explanation often sits in records held by the people being asked to explain themselves.
What the facility holds
- Care plans and MDS assessments. These set out what the facility itself decided your loved one needed. They establish the standard it agreed to meet.
- Staffing rosters and time records. How many people were actually on the floor, which is often a different number from the one on the schedule.
- Medication administration records. What was given, when, and what was missed.
- Incident reports. Falls and injuries have to be documented internally, and those reports are usually written before anyone anticipates a claim.
- Inspection history. Where a facility has been cited previously for the same failure, that goes to whether it already knew.
What you hold
Photographs with dates, notes of what staff told you and who said it, correspondence with the facility, and a record of when you raised concerns and what followed. None of it requires a lawyer, and what a family documents in the first few weeks is frequently what matters months later.
Why time matters more than the deadline
Records are destroyed on schedule and staff move on. The first thing we do is send a preservation letter requiring the facility to keep its records rather than dispose of them in the ordinary course. A claim brought well within the time limit can still be hard to prove if the paperwork went first.
How to Check a Las Cruces Facility’s Record
If you are concerned about a facility, some of what you would like to know is already public.
Medicare’s Care Compare covers every nursing home in the country that accepts Medicare or Medicaid, including those in Las Cruces and the rest of Doña Ana County. For each one it publishes health inspection results, staffing information, quality measures and any penalties imposed.
What to look at
- Inspection reports. What state surveyors observed during their visit, and the violations the facility was cited for.
- Repeat citations. A finding that shows up in one inspection and then again in the next tells a different story from a single isolated issue.
- Staffing information. Reported staffing levels, and how those levels measure up against other facilities.
- Penalties. Any fines or payment denials that have been handed down.
Care Compare only covers nursing homes that accept Medicare or Medicaid. Assisted living facilities in New Mexico are licensed under a separate system, and the state holds those records rather than Medicare. If your loved one lives in assisted living, the records still exist, they just sit in a different place.
A citation on its own does not prove the facility caused your loved one’s injury, and a clean record does not mean nothing went wrong. What the history gives you is context. When a facility has already been cited for the same kind of failure, that speaks to whether it knew about the problem and what it did in response.
Checking a facility’s inspection record is one of the first steps we take when a family reaches out. You are free to search the reports on your own, though there is no need to do that before you call. Provide the name of the facility to our team and we will pull the history for you.
Is There a Time Limit to File a Lawsuit in New Mexico?
There is, and which one applies depends on facts you may not have thought about yet.
Your loved one is alive. Three years from the date of the injury, under NMSA § 37-1-8.
Your loved one has passed away. Three years again, but under a different statute, NMSA § 41-2-2, and counted from the date of death. If the neglect began eighteen months before your mother died, those two clocks are a year and a half apart. The one that matters is the date of death.
The facility is state-run. Two years under NMSA § 41-4-15, and written notice to the entity within 90 days under NMSA § 41-4-16. Ninety days is short enough that families routinely lose the claim before they have finished arranging a funeral.
Nobody can say exactly when the harm started. Pressure sores and malnutrition develop over weeks. New Mexico allows a court to find the clock started when you learned of the injury and understood the facility was behind it, rather than on some date nobody can identify.
The honest position is that most families who contact us are nowhere near any of these deadlines. What they are close to is losing the evidence, which is a separate problem and a faster one.
Speak To a Las Cruces Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer Today
When concerned family members contact us, many are not sure they have a case. That is the normal starting point, and it is what the first conversation is for.
Bring whatever information you have. Photographs, the admission paperwork, anything the facility has put in writing, and the dates you raised concerns. If you have none of it, call us anyway. We are here to help and can request records you may have never seen previously.
We will tell you if we do not think there is a claim. If there is, we will explain what we would do next and what it would involve, and the decision stays with you.
At PKSD, we has recovered more than $500 million for clients. Partner Jeff Pitman has been certified as a Civil Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy since 1999, and the firm’s nursing home practice includes lawyers, paralegals and nurses.
The consultation is free and confidential. No upfront costs, and we are paid only if we win.
Call 575-213-8073 today. Available 24/7.
Our Las Cruces Office:
PKSD
2455 Missouri Ave, Suite A
Las Cruces, NM 88001
575-213-8073
