Lawyers for infamous nursing home magnate Bob Dean say they have reached a settlement with patients and family members who have sued over the bungled evacuation of more than 840 elderly and disabled residents to a warehouse for Hurricane Ida, court records show.
Many of those plaintiffs might be dismayed at the possible payout. Dean’s lawyers claim his insurance policies max out at $12 million to $15 million. That’s the sum that would go to cover payouts under the pending deal, attorneys for several plaintiffs say.
That equates to less than $18,000 on average for each patient Dean ordered evacuated to the warehouse in Independence from seven since-shuttered nursing homes, minus attorney fees.
Attorneys announced the settlement in a legal filing with the state Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal. They said in court filings that the money would go to paying a proposed “class” of plaintiffs, though they provided no other details.
“We are getting all of the money we’re able to find that Bob Dean has available,” said attorney Don Massey, who represents several families of nursing home residents who were part of the evacuation. “Every bit of it.”
Massey said former nursing home residents and their families may also pursue medical malpractice claims against Dean and nursing home medical directors. They can do so even if they receive insurance payouts in the civil case, he said.
Dean faces at least 10 lawsuits over the evacuation of seven of his south h nursing homes to a cramped warehouse in Independence, where conditions quickly soured.
Dean was out of the state at the time. Text messages show he ignored pleas from a top deputy to clear patients from the deteriorating warehouse as patients died and he quarreled bitterly with state authorities who tried to intervene. The state has attributed at least five patient deaths to the storm.
Massey said that his clients deserve more money given the horrors that they experienced in the warehouse and that several have since died. But he also said the nursing home residents are among from Dean right now, including creditors to whom Dean owes $96 million.
“I wish as much as anybody, certainly our families and residents, that Bob Dean was more financially responsible than he’s proven to be. We are not finding any assets that are readily available to grab and convert to money for our residents,” Massey said.
Last week, attorneys for several patients and family members asked the appeals court to lift a stay in place as the court considers two pending writs, saying they wanted to return to a Jefferson Parish courtroom to seal the settlement deal.
Not all of Dean’s evacuees are on board with the idea of an across-the-board settlement.Attorney Madro Bandaries said he wasn’t notified of the settlement before receiving a copy of the motion by other plaintiffs’ attorneys to lift the stay.
, is bound to a wheelchair and claims her mishandling at Dean’s warehouse cost her a second leg.“Naturally, we are also concerned with the hundreds of other individuals, former residents of Mr. Dean’s nursing homes, that also seek full compensation as to their alleged damages and want to see them made whole,” Bandaries said.
In one of the two writs, Dean’s attorneys challenged a decision to keep District Judge Donald “Chick” Foret presiding over the lawsuits. Another judge recently over an alleged personal bias against a lawyer who had partnered with one of the plaintiff’s attorneys involved in the case.
From the bench at a May status conference, Foret referred to the lawyer in question as a “piece of s**t,” court records show.
The appeals court denied the request to lift the stay, however, insisting that Dean’s attorneys first ask to withdraw their writs. Dean’s lawyers refused, meaning a settlement will likely have to wait until the court rules.
In the second writ, Dean’s attorneys are aiming to kill an order Foret issued in May, calling Dean to testify.
Dean so far has avoided sitting for a deposition, with his attorneys claiming he suffers from dementia. The 68-year-old business owner faces tens of millions of dollars of debt, mostly related to the state’s closure of his seven nursing homes a week after Ida.
The state to run the nursing homes, though he’s still fighting to get them back.
Creditors have seized several of Dean’s properties, while he has unloaded other properties he once owned. Dean recently sold a historic mansion on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans that once belonged to famed author Anne Rice for $3.2 million, according to real estate listings.
In the meantime, h Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office last month booked Dean on eight counts of cruelty to infirmed people, five counts of healthcare fraud and two counts of obstruction of justice related to the evacuation.
H. Minor Pipes, an attorney for Dean, did not return a message Tuesday.
