Nursing Homes Wield Pandemic Immunity Laws to Duck Wrongful Death Suits
This is a KFF Health News story.
In early 2020, with reports of COVID-19 outbreaks making dire headlines, Trever Schapers worried about her father's safety in a nursing home in Queens.
She had delighted in watching her dad, John Schapers, blow out the candles on his 90th birthday cake that February at the West Lawrence Care Center in the New York City borough. Then the home went into lockdown.
Soon her father was dead. The former union painter spiked a fever and was transferred to a hospital, where he tested positive for COVID, his daughter said, and after two weeks on a ventilator, he died in May 2020.
But when Trever Schapers sued the nursing home for negligence and wrongful death in 2022, a judge dismissed the case, citing a New York state law hastily passed early in the pandemic. It granted immunity to medical providers for "harm or damages" from an "act or omission" in treating or arranging care for COVID. She is appealing the decision.