MD jury awards $1.85M to nursing home resident left outside in heat

Morningside House of Satyr Hill is shown in Parkville on Dec. 26, 2025. (Brian Compere/The Daily Recod)

by Ian Round

Earlier this month, jurors in Baltimore County awarded a $1.85 million judgment to a nursing home resident with dementia who suffered heat stroke after being left outside for several hours.

The award is connected to a June 2024 incident at Morningside House of Satyr Hill, a facility in Parkville that operates within the broader Morningside House network of elder care properties across the mid-Atlantic and Florida. There, staff took resident Ann McShane outside, then neglected to bring her back in for at least four hours. Later that afternoon, staffers couldn’t find her for dinnertime. They eventually located her “slumped over” in the courtyard, severely sunburned, covered in vomit and barely responsive, her lawsuit stated.

“I went outside to get some fresh air and I was yelling for hours for someone to let me in,” McShane, who is in her 70s, told first-responders and hospital staff, according to the incident report filed by the Baltimore County Fire Department.

She was hospitalized for a week and a half.

The incident was not a one-off for Morningside House of Satyr Hill. State regulators with the Office of Health Care Quality (OHCQ), a division of the Maryland Department of Health, have cited the nursing home for failing to not only properly administer and document resident medications, but also to provide mandatory incident reports after residents’ injuries and falls.

Maryland has also issued “deficiency notices” after the elopement of at least two memory-care residents, McShane’s complaint states. In one case, staff failed to account for a resident after a fire drill; the person was returned after a concerned neighbor called 911. In another case, staff didn’t know a resident got out because the alarm system was not working.

Beth Sinnott, executive director of Morningside House of Satyr Hill, said in a brief interview that the organization takes such incidents “very seriously” and has acted to make sure this doesn’t happen again. She declined to say what had changed.

“The safety and wellbeing of our residents is our highest priority,” Sinnott said.

Morningside House was represented by the law firm Kiernan Trebach; a lawyer declined to comment.

McShane, who was represented by Owings Mills attorneys Allen Honick and Dustin Furman, sued in December 2024, alleging negligence and breach of contract. She now lives in an assisted living facility in White Marsh, Honick said, and while she has recovered from her physical injuries, the heat stroke left “significant lasting effects on her overall wellbeing.”

The jury on Dec. 17 awarded her $1.85 million, all for noneconomic damages, Honick said. She is set to receive $965,000 due to the cap on such damages.

McShane was the named plaintiff; her sister served as a guardian ad litem during the proceedings after the defendant raised concerns about her competency.

“Had the Plaintiff and her family known that Morningside had a pattern of ignoring and failing to implement OHCQ corrective action plans,” her complaint stated, “especially those addressing safety, medication management, and incident reporting for memory care residents, the Plaintiff would never have become a resident at Morningside.” 

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MD jury awards $1.85M to nursing home resident left outside in heat