NASGA's California Advocacy Liaison Linda Kincaid's Mother, Carol Hahn, passed Saturday, August 17, 2013. Two days after Carol Hahn's death, Governor Brown signed AB937 - legislation created to clarify conservatees' rights to visitors, mail, and phone calls.
Linda stands in front of the Board of Supervisors in honor of her Mother who was a victim of conservatorship abuse the final years of her life.
Carol Hahn leaves behind her daughter, a stellar advocate for victims of unlawful and abusive guardianships and conservatorships and for reform.
Source:
Linda Kincaid Speaks at the 082013 Board of Supervisors Meeting to Honor Her Mother, Carol Hahn
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Employees at Totowa mental health facility admit stealing patient information to file fake tax returns
Alidu Dramani, 33, a practical nurse from Irvington, and Evans Boamah, 30, of Elizabeth, a human services assistant, admitted to U.S. District Judge William J. Martini in Newark earlier this month that they stole the names and Social Security numbers of patients at the North Jersey Developmental Center.
They then gave the stolen identity information to a conspirator, who was a tax preparer, to file false tax returns and get federal tax refunds to which they were not entitled, authorities said.
As a result of the defendants’ participation in the conspiracy, tax preparers filed, attempted and intended to file false tax returns for 2009 through 2011 seeking $396,416 in tax refunds, authorities said.
Dramani, who was hired in 2007 and earned $49,134, and Boamah, who started a year later and made $33,290, were arrested by agents of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations unit in August 2012.
They were suspended without pay and are facing termination from their jobs at the 188-acre campus in Totowa, which currently serves 283 developmentally disabled residents, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services said Tuesday.
Full Article and Source:
Employees at Totowa mental health facility admit stealing patient information to file fake tax returns
'...That Basic Principle of Justice' Applies to Guardianship Abuse?
It is an elementary principle of jurisprudence in all
civilized countries that before property or liberty may be taken from an
individual he shall have an opportunity to be heard on charges brought against
him. This is a rule so universal in its application to all common-law, chancery, or statutory proceedings that there is general agreement that no court has power otherwise to divest a person of property or punish him. In fact, the recognition of that basic principle of justice is so widespread that courts are now seldom called upon to restore rights of individuals so ruthlessly taken from them.
Source:
Leininger v. Reichle, 317 Ill. 625, 148 N.E. 384; Heppe v. Szczepanski, 209 Ill. 88, 70 N.E. 737, 101 Am.St.Rep. 221; Botsford v. O'Conner, 57 Ill. 72.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Disabled Plaintiffs, State Reach Deal on Living Conditions
The class action lawsuit, filed in 2010 by disability rights advocates and six institutionalized plaintiffs between the ages of 26 and 46, alleges that Gov. Rick Perry and state social services officials have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide appropriate treatment to some 4,500 Texans living in nursing homes.
Garth Corbett, a senior attorney with the watchdog group Disability Rights Texas and the lead attorney on the case, told the Tribune in 2010 that many of those individuals were receiving care for their disabilities at home or in the community but were mistakenly sent to nursing homes after being hospitalized for illness. Once there, he said, they were effectively trapped, since many did not have advocates or the capacity to argue for their own transfer.
Under the interim agreement, the state has committed to expanding community living options for people with intellectual disabilities; avoiding admitting individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities to a nursing facility if those people can safely live in the community instead; and devising educational activities to address community living options for affected individuals and their families.
Full Article and Source:
Disabled Plaintiffs, State Reach Deal on Living Conditions
C.A. Upholds Dismissal of Suit Against State Bar, but Throws Out Fee Award on Jurisdictional Grounds
The Court of Appeal for this district yesterday threw out an order requiring a local attorney who sued the State Bar to pay attorney fees.
The suit by Patricia Barry was properly dismissed, Justice Victoria Chavez wrote, because it challenged a disciplinary stipulation, and lawyer discipline is exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. But because the trial court lacked jurisdiction, Chavez explained, it could not award attorney fees under the anti-SLAPP statute.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Deirdre Hill awarded the fees after concluding that the State Bar’s pursuit of lawyer discipline is protected activity for purposes of the statute, and that Barry failed to state a prima facie claim. One of the reasons for the latter holding was that the trial court lacked jurisdiction over State Bar disciplinary matters.
Hill was correct on that point, Chavez said. But because the trial court lacked jurisdiction, its award of more than $2,500 in fees must be reversed, she said.
Because the trial court’s ruling came on an anti-SLAPP motion, and not on a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, Brown v. Desert Christian Center (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 733 does not apply, Chavez reasoned. Brown held that the trial judge, having dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction after having determined that the matter came within the exclusive jurisdiction of the workers’ compensation system, could award costs.
That award, the appellate court held, was incidental to the court’s exercise of its “jurisdiction to determine its own jurisdiction.”
The stipulation that Barry, 70, sought to overturn was entered into in 2011. According to State Bar records, the attorney was suspended for two years, stayed, and placed on two years of probation with a 60-day actual suspension and ordered to take the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination.
The State Bar summarized the case on its website as follows;
“Barry stipulated that she pursued cases without merit. She filed a series of lawsuits on behalf of a client that included charges of taking a child from her parents, conspiracy and making a false claim of child abuse and neglect. Barry appealed after most of the claims were dismissed (including an appeal to the Supreme Court). Granting a request by the other side for attorney’s fees after Barry’s petitions were denied, one court called her actions “groundless and vexatious” and said the case ‘was unreasonable, frivolous, meritless.’
Full Article and Source:
C.A. Upholds Dismissal of Suit Against State Bar, but Throws Out Fee Award on Jurisdictional Grounds
Financial Elder Abuse Stealing by Any Other Name
The state of California has one of the toughest and broadest laws protecting against Financial Elder Abuse in the US. So broad, in fact, that under financial elder abuse law if a business were to dispense the wrong change to a consumer and the individual was in a position to prove he was 65 or over, then the issuance of wrongful change could be interpreted as financial abuse of the elderly.
Sadly, according to a former professional in the salon industry who returned to school at 65 and became an attorney, elder abuse financial exploitation is becoming quite common, and very serious. “It never dawned on me that this might be a crime,” Helen Karr, today the elder abuse special assistant in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, said in comments published in The San Francisco Chronicle (The Chronicle 3/29/13). “It wasn’t until I became an attorney that financial abuse was included as a crime of elder abuse. It is just plain stealing.”
That stealing, more often than not, originates from within a senior’s own family.
Karr reveals that in her former career as a supervisor at beauty salons in department stores, she would overhear scores of conversations between hairdressers and their elderly clients lamenting the loss of funds to acquaintances, caregivers and even family members - loans that were never repaid.
Now 78, Karr has spearheaded various initiatives in an attempt to better protect the elderly from those who might otherwise take advantage of them. One of her initiatives was to spearhead an elderly financial abuse law in California that requires banks and financial institutions to report suspicion of elder financial abuse.
Part of the financial exploitation elderly problem is that medical science is allowing people to live longer than they used to. And while an individual may have more prolonged physical longevity than a previous generation, their mental capacity may not keep pace.
Hence, the upswing in financial elderly abuse.
It’s not just family or so-called friends either, Karr said in The Chronicle. Financial planners and vendors of financial products can smell an easy sale and commission through the issuance of a product not at all appropriate for a trusting senior of advanced age.
“An annuity can be a good investment,” Karr told The Chronicle. “But if you’re already in your 70s and an insurance salesman tries to sell you one, and the fine print is that you can’t take out your money for 20 years without a very steep penalty, that’s an inappropriate product for that person.”
Full Article and Source:
Financial Elder Abuse Stealing by Any Other Name
Thursday, August 22, 2013
SURVIVOR MADE WARD, AS AL KATZ
COMMUNITY ALERT
Last month, July 2013, one of our precious Survivors heard a knock on her door and was surprised to find a stranger who wanted to ask her many questions. She had thought that he was an administrator from her Sarasota housing complex, but he turned out to be a psychiatrist who was surreptitiously conducting an examination of her in order to put her into emergency temporary guardianship, which did occur just a few days later (without notification to her closest family members).
As many of you know, my own Father, Al Katz, a Holocaust Survivor, was likewise put into emergency temporary guardianship here without any notification sent to me as his next-of-kin, which notification is required by law. My Father’s emergency temporary guardianship was court ordered on Erev Rosh Hashonah 2009.
Today, another Holocaust Survivor would have been similarly forced into permanent Florida State guardianship shortly before Rosh Hashonah; however, Jews from across the United States worked for many days to prevent this unnecessary confinement of a Survivor, separation from her beloved family members, and isolation from the Jewish community.
The attorney that was appointed by the court to represent the Survivor was the same attorney that was responsible for my Father’s placement into the Baker Act illegally for three weeks without any court hearing, his lockdown for three additional weeks in an abusive nursing home, and his inability to come home from the nursing home, which traumas and medical neglect nearly cost my Father his life.
I urge you to be very careful when you encounter anyone or any experiences that could pose a risk to you in terms of elder abuse or exploitation. In today’s case, the Survivor lives in a luxury housing complex and has very significant assets. Once a person is forced into guardianship, all of his or her assets are under the control of someone appointed by the court, who may not have any relationship with the Ward at all, in other words, a total stranger. The results to the person and property (asset seizure) of the Ward can be disastrous. I ask you to begin this Rosh Hashonah safely and please feel free to contact The Al Katz Center any time you are faced with a troubling situation in which we can assist you.
At The Al Katz Center, Survivors are treasures, the backbone of the Jewish people, to whom we all owe an inestimable debt of gratitude for their extreme sacrifices. The Al Katz Center is a refuge and resource for Jews young and old, observant and non-.
L’Shana Tova,
Beverly Newman, Ed.D.
The Al Katz Center
713 South Orange Avenue
Sarasota, Florida 34236
(941) 313-9239
Discipline Hearing Against Judge to Proceed
Jones was attempting to prevent a hearing by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline regarding an alleged conflict of interest. Jones heard cases involving a prosecutor with whom he was maintaining a relationship in 2011. Jones denies allegations of misconduct.
Full Article and Source:
Discipline Hearing Against Judge to Proceed
Former Nursing Home Employee Accused of Stealing over $10,000
KSWO, Lawton, OK- Wichita Falls, TX: News, Weather, Sports. ABC, 24/7, Telemundo -
A former nursing home employee is facing charges of elderly exploitation. Over a span of six months, police said Stefani Bridges stole over ten thousand dollars from an elderly man she was caring for while working at a nursing home near 73rd Street and Northwest Cache Road.
Police said Bridges was authorized to make purchases for an elderly man through the use of his bank card. But police said instead in a string of transactions, she transferred the money onto her own credit cards.
She vowed to take care of the elderly living at this nursing home. But instead, Bridges allegedly bilked an elderly man of over ten thousand dollars.
Red flags were raised after the nursing home's Director of Finance was contacted by a bank and was told that a bank account belonging to one of their residents had been overdrawn by thousands of dollars. The missing money was traced back to employee Stefani Bridges.
Once confronted Bridges admitted to her coworkers that she had in fact taken the money. She was able to do it after she transferred money from her victim's account and into her personal accounts including credit cards.
She used the money to pay off some of her debt and also spent several hundreds of dollars while making her cell phone payments.
Full Article and Source:
Former Nursing Home Employee Accused of Stealing over $10,000
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