Summary Judgment For An Assisted Living Facility In New Jersey

Summary Judgment for an Assisted Living facility in New Jersey, represented by Attorneys William Mundy, Lauren Angeles, Ahsan Jafry, and Frantz Duncan, was recently affirmed by the Appellate Division. The case involved a fall and fractured hip. Plaintiff alleged that the facility failed to keep the resident’s room free of clutter as required under the residents care plan. During deposition, Plaintiff’s expert nurse suggested that the room be checked every hour, without any objective source basis for this opinion. The trial court precluded the testimony and entered Summary Judgment. The appeals court affirmed, stating that the expert couldn’t give a source for the supposed standard of inspecting the room once every hour. The appeals court noted that the expert’s written report contains no mention of the hourly standard, and on deposition she was reluctant and “repeatedly equivocated” before settling on the one-hour standard.