When a drug addict is admitted into a rehab clinic, patients and their families expect that the clinic will provide a high level of care and treatment while also looking after the personal safety of their loved one, especially when he or she is going through withdrawal. One issue regarding the personal safety of patients is that they must be supervised and monitored 24 hours a day to prevent self-harm or harming others.
Talk to Us About Wrongful Death and Rehab Clinics
If you lost a family member anywhere in California due to a breach of a rehab facility’s duty to supervise and monitor him or her in residential treatment, you may be eligible for compensation under California’s wrongful death laws found in section 377.60 of the California Code of Civil Procedure. You can speak with our California wrongful death lawyer at Maison Law confidentially, with no obligation and at no cost whatsoever, about what happened to your loved one and any legal recourse you might have.
California’s Opioid Epidemic
The State of California is suffering from an opioid epidemic. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and exponentially more potent and addictive than morphine and other opioids. It’s often mixed with other drugs like heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine. As a result of this opioid explosion, treatment facilities have opened throughout the state. Both federal and state licensing requirements are lax, especially on the issue of the general standard of care for the attempted rehabilitation of recovering drug addicts. Staffing is often insufficient, or they’re not qualified for their jobs, so the pervasive issue of patients relapsing and injuring themselves or others surrounds the confines of every treatment facility in the state. As a result, wrongful death lawsuits against drug rehab facilities are increasingly common in California courthouses.
How Wrongful Deaths are Related to Drug Rehab Facilities
Most wrongful death cases are based on the law of negligence. Any number of factors can be attributable to a wrongful death caused by the breach of a standard of care at a drug rehab facility. Here are a few examples of them, all of which pivot on inadequate supervision, monitoring or security:
- Patients sneaking out of a facility, bringing opioids back in and overdosing and dying at a drug rehab facility.
- Employees or visitors bring opioids into a facility for a patient who overdoses and dies there.
- Criminal acts perpetrated on patients inside or outside of the facility.
- Motor vehicle crashes caused by patients who have either snuck out of a facility or who were allowed a short trip outside of it.
- Death at a supervised activity inside or outside of the facility.
- Vicarious medical or clinical malpractice by a rehab facility’s administrators or personnel.
If you lost a loved one due to a breach of the standard of care at a drug rehab facility, that loss might have been perfectly preventable. You can contact us here at Maison Law to arrange for a free consultation and case review with our California wrongful death lawyer. The filing of a wrongful death lawsuit won’t bring back your loved one, but it could operate to compensate you and your family for a wide variety of valuable economic and non-economic damages like the loss of the financial support of your loved one, the loss of benefits, funeral and burial expenses and the loss of his or her society and companionship.
Call us and tell us what happened and how it happened, and your questions will be answered too. Then, you’ll be advised of the full range of legal options that might be available for you to pursue. California has set time limits on when wrongful death cases can be brought. Contact us as soon as you can.
