Massachusetts' Highest Court Rejects Criminal Prosecution of Nursing Home Facility

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts indicted Life Care Centers of America, a nursing home corporation, based on its staff's alleged failure to act to protect a resident from known life-threatening harm. The indictment charged the corporation with involuntary manslaughter and neglect based on its collective knowledge and conduct of a number of the corporation's employees, without singling out any one employee for indictment.

This was the first time in Massachusetts that a corporation had been indicted criminally for manslaughter and neglect in a nursing home setting without the charging of an individual, and the question of whether a corporation can be held liable under such a theory was taken up by the state's highest court.

Unfortunately, the court declined to find a criminal prosecution proper against the corporation, ruling that the alleged criminal responsibility could not be supported under state law.

AARP's brief, filed by attorneys with AARP Foundation Litigation, reviewed the history of nursing home regulation, litigation and criminal liability.

The brief also discussed the collective knowledge theory of corporate liability — a legal doctrine that is derived from the concept that a corporation can be held criminally liable for the acts or omissions of its agents acting within the scope of their employment. This theory has, for example, held trucking firms criminally liable for knowingly and willfully permitting unsafe drivers to operate, and it has been used in other situations where the courts determined it was the corporation's responsibility to determine whether its employees, in carrying out their duties to their employer, were complying with the law.

AARP's brief detailed how numerous states around the country had brought criminal charges against nursing home corporations and have resolved those cases separately from charges brought at the same time against individual officers or agents of the corporation. That separate liability, the brief argued, combined with the collective knowledge theory, supported the state's contention that a corporation can in fact be held liable for criminal misconduct in the absence of charges against individuals

Full Article and Source:
Commonwealth of MA v Life Care Centers of America

Read AARP's Amicus Brief