Nursing home to fork over $19 million for mistreatment of senior who died
The Brooklyn-Queens Nursing Home in Cypress Hills has officially made the record books: it’s the first nursing home which will ever be forced to pay punitive damages to the family of a senior who died from injuries he received under its care.
After hearing about the nursing home horror show that 76-year-old John Danzy had to face, a Brooklyn Jury awarded his grieving family $3.75 million for his pain and suffering and $15 million in punitive damages.
The retired butcher had stayed at the Brooklyn-Queens Nursing Home for just nine months before concerned family members pulled him out.
Doctors estimated that the senior was suffering from more than twenty bedsores when he was removed from the facility. A few months later, he died of an infection stemming from one of the bedsores.
Attorneys estimate that the punitive damages were so high because attorneys for Danzy’s family could prove that workers at the nursing home had altered records to cover up the substandard care from which the senior suffered.
An FBI expert was called in to testify that about 100 different skin-check notes showing “G” for “good” had been penned over to show “B” for “broken” — an effort by the home to claim it hadn’t missed the horrific sores, Danzy family attorney Dennis Kelly said.
“Someone went back and wrote B’s over the G’s to cover their tracks, so they falsified the records,” he told reporters. “We believe that once they found out they were being sued, they went back and said, ‘How could we have G’s here when they guy has 20 sores?’”
Calls to the Brooklyn-Queens Nursing home for comment were not returned once the verdict was read.
57 years for murder
Jacques Dorcinvil, 33, will be 90 when he gets out of prison for the murder of his ex girlfriend and the attempted murder of her son, criminal court Judge Matthew D’Emic promised this week as he sentenced the convicted murderer to 57 years behind bars.
Dorcinvil’s December 16 sentencing came two weeks after a jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree on December 3.
Judge D’Emic sentenced him to 25 years to life for the murder of Claudette Marcellus as well as an additional 25 years for the attempted murder of the woman’s son, who was 12 at the time of the 2007 slaying.
In addition, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for an assault on Marcellus that took place a few months before her murder.
Police said that Dorcinvil was arguing with Marcellus in her Flatbush apartment when he picked up a kitchen knife and began to swipe at her. Her son heard his mother screaming and rushed to intervene but Dorcinvil knocked the boy to the ground and began stabbing him, slicing his throat.
When Marcellus tried to protect her son, Dorcinvil turned his knife back on her.
Marcellus died in front of her apartment building, officials said. Cops followed the blood trail back to her apartment, where they found the critically wounded child.
Although he suffered a slashed trachea and was unable to speak, he was still able to identify his mother’s attacker by writing Dorcinvil’s name for police.
Dorcinvil was caught on video surveillance fleeing the apartment, officials said. He was found in Miami on May 24, trying to flee the country to Haiti.
Police said that Dorcinvil had assaulted both victims in the past. They had both filed orders of protection against him when Marcellus was killed.
After his arrest for his Marcellus’ murder, Dorcinvil was indicted for the killing of another ex-girlfriend, who was stabbed to death in 2003. That case has yet to go to trial.
