Riley v. Maison Orleans II, Inc.

Lawrence Banks was a resident at Maison Orleans (Maison) (defendant), a Louisiana nursing home. Fellow resident Joseph Harris attacked Banks in the middle of the night using a steel pipe that Harris took from the maintenance room. During the attack, the home’s attending aids were asleep. Consequently, a worker from across the building was the first to intervene, and by that time Banks had sustained multiple head injuries, lacerations, and fractures that required surgery. Banks died of a heart attack a couple of months after the incident. Queenester Banks Riley, Fredonia Banks Peters, and Sylvia Banks Robinson (Banks’s family) (plaintiffs) sued Maison and Maison’s insurer, Scottsdale Insurance Company (Scottsdale) (defendant), on behalf of themselves and Banks’s estate. They asserted a survival action, a wrongful-death claim, and negligence. The claims were based on Maison’s alleged breach of its duties to supervise and protect residents. At trial, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Richoux, who assessed Harris before his admission to Maison, testified that Harris had organic brain syndrome, a dementia-like condition. However, he said that Harris did not have a history of violence and did not show any hostile tendencies during his evaluation, leading Richoux to conclude that Harris was fit to reside at Maison and was unlikely to engage in aggressive conduct. Maison’s assistant administrator, Eric Wilmore, testified that Harris was subject to 24-hour supervision but that the supervision was merely to ensure that Harris, who could not care for himself, bathed, ate, and took his medications regularly. Further, Wilmore explained that 24-hour supervision did not mean supervision at all times but instead meant that staff was to check on Harris every two hours. Nursing assistant Regina Guillory admitted to seeing Harris with the pipe shortly before the incident and asking him to surrender it. However, Harris refused, and Guillory by herself could not take the pipe from him. The district court held in Banks’s family’s favor and awarded damages totaling $854,729. Maison and Scottsdale appealed.