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You trusted a nursing home to give your mother, father, or spouse the care you could no longer provide at home, and now you are looking at a bedsore, a bruise, or a sudden weight loss that was never there before. That moment, when you realize the people paid to protect your loved one may have failed them, is one of the hardest a family can face.
You are not being paranoid, and you are not alone. Illinois has a voluminous law known as the Nursing Home Care Act, which was designed to prevent nursing homes from neglecting their residents. Nevertheless, reports of elder abuse and neglect continue, with complaints ranging from bedsores and dehydration to broken bones and wrongful death from lack of quality care.
As lawyers who have dedicated their careers to helping victims of personal injury in Chicago, our attorneys at D&W Law Group are prepared to advocate for your loved one, put a stop to abuse or neglect, and help your family get the care and compensation the law allows.
D&W Law Group is led by founding partners who together bring decades of Illinois injury litigation experience to nursing home cases, and the firm serves Chicago-area families in English, Spanish, and Polish.
Nursing home quality varies widely across the Chicago area.
Medicare’s Care Compare tool rates every participating facility from one to five stars based on health inspections, staffing, and other quality measures, and a meaningful share of homes near Chicago carry only one or two stars, which Medicare treats as “below average” or “much below average.” Even if you do your research and find a highly rated facility for your loved one, instances of neglect may still occur, as high turnovers and staffing changes can transform the quality of a facility during a resident’s long-term stay.
Neglect is often gradual, and families frequently notice changes before they can prove what caused them. Watch for:
If you notice any of these signs, document what you see with photos and notes, and speak with a lawyer about your options right away.
The Illinois Nursing Home Care Act prohibits both abuse and neglect. Abuse is defined as any physical or mental injury or sexual assault.
Neglect includes the failure to provide or willful withholding of adequate medical care, mental health treatment, psychiatric rehabilitation, personal care, and assistance with all activities of daily living that are necessary to avoid physical harm, mental anguish or mental illness. Nursing home residents have many rights under the Nursing Home Care Act.
These include, among others, the right to:
A nursing home owner or licensee can be held liable to the resident for any intentional or negligent act or omission of the facility’s agents or employees which injures the resident.
Illinois courts have confirmed that the owner and licensee of a nursing-home facility are liable to a resident for any intentional or negligent act or omission of their agents or employees that injures the resident, and that because a cause of action under the Act is distinct from a cause of action for medical malpractice, no report under 735 ILCS 5/2-622 is required before filing suit.
Injured residents can recover not only compensation for the damages they have suffered but also their attorney’s fees and costs. Under the Act, the licensee shall pay the actual damages and costs and attorney’s fees to a facility resident whose rights, as specified in Part 1 of Article II of this Act, are violated.
This provision of the law helps you to obtain high-quality legal representation while keeping the entire amount of compensation awarded to you. Illinois also places no cap on what a jury can award in these cases.
In Best v. Taylor Machine Works, 179 Ill.2d 367 (1997), the Court struck down provisions of the Illinois Tort Reform Act of 1995, including the $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages in a broad range of injury cases, and the Illinois Supreme Court later held in Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital that statutory caps on noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, in medical malpractice actions are unconstitutional.
Our attorneys at D&W Law Group are compassionate advocates for nursing home residents and their families. Let our team be your voice and advocate on your behalf to make sure you or your loved one are treated properly with dignity, respect and adequate care.
Contact us for a free consultation if you suspect your loved one is being neglected.
Nursing home negligence rarely looks the same in two cases. In our experience, the harm typically falls into one of these categories:
Illinois law puts a hard deadline on nursing home negligence claims, and missing it can end a case before it starts. Personal injury claims generally must be commenced within two years under Section 13-202 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which sets the two-year filing deadline for most personal injury actions in the state.
Wrongful death claims generally follow a similar two-year period that runs from the date of death rather than the date of the underlying injury.
The clock can start running on the date of the injury or, in some cases, on the date the family reasonably discovered the harm and its cause.
Because nursing home cases depend heavily on medical records, staffing logs, and surveillance footage that facilities are not required to keep indefinitely, waiting to investigate can cost a family real evidence long before the legal deadline arrives.
A lawsuit is not the only tool available to a family. The Illinois Department of Public Health licenses and investigates nursing homes in the state, and any concern about a resident’s immediate health and safety can be reported to the department’s Central Complaint Registry hotline at.
An IDPH investigation can document violations, trigger citations against the facility, and create an independent record that supports a civil claim.
Filing an IDPH complaint does not extend the legal deadline to sue, so families should treat a report to the state and a conversation with a lawyer as two steps on the same track, not one instead of the other.
Most nursing home negligence claims arising in Chicago are filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County.
In the city, civil cases seeking damages in excess of $30,000 are heard in the Law Division at the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 West Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois 60602, which is where most serious nursing home injury and wrongful death cases in the city are litigated.
Cases filed in the Law Division move through written discovery, depositions of facility staff and administrators, and often expert testimony on the applicable standard of care before trial or settlement.
Our attorneys prepare every nursing home case as if it will be tried in front of a Cook County jury, because facilities and their insurers negotiate differently when they know a firm is ready to go the distance.
D&W Law Group has represented families across a range of injury claims, including nursing home negligence. Results depend on the facts of each case, but the table below reflects work our firm has reported handling.
| Outcome | Case Type |
|---|---|
| $500,000 | Nursing home resident who choked on food due to lack of supervision |
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Look for physical signs such as bedsores, unexplained bruises, sudden weight loss, or poor hygiene, and behavioral signs such as fear of a specific staff member or a sudden reluctance to have visitors. If something feels wrong during a visit, trust that instinct and start documenting what you see.
The Illinois Nursing Home Care Act is a state law that defines resident rights, prohibits abuse and neglect, and lets a resident or family sue the facility’s owner and licensee directly when those rights are violated.
Most personal injury claims, including nursing home negligence claims, must be filed within two years under Illinois law. Waiting to speak with a lawyer can make it harder to gather medical records and staffing evidence before that window closes, so it is best to act as soon as you suspect a problem.
Some nursing home admission agreements include arbitration clauses, and while the Nursing Home Care Act discourages waivers of a resident’s right to sue, Illinois courts have held that federal arbitration law can make these agreements enforceable.
Even so, an agreement can still be challenged, especially when a resident lacked capacity to sign or a family member signed without proper authority, so an attorney should review the specific agreement in your loved one’s file before assuming arbitration applies.
Illinois law specifically protects nursing home residents from retaliation for filing a grievance or lawsuit. If a facility discharges, isolates, or otherwise punishes a resident for a complaint, that retaliation is itself a separate violation of the resident’s rights.
Families may recover compensation for medical expenses, pain and suffering, and in some cases attorney’s fees and costs under the Nursing Home Care Act’s fee-shifting provision.
Because Illinois does not cap noneconomic damages in these cases, the amount recovered depends on the severity of the harm and the strength of the evidence rather than a statutory ceiling.
No. D&W Law Group offers a free, confidential consultation to review what happened to your loved one and explain the options available under Illinois law, and the firm can meet with families in English, Spanish, or Polish.
If your loved one is in immediate danger, get medical attention right away and report the facility to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Once your loved one is safe, preserve any photos, notes, or medical records you have and speak with a lawyer before evidence disappears.
Every day a nursing home spends covering up neglect is a day your loved one keeps paying for it. Contact D&W Law Group for a free, confidential consultation to talk through what you have seen and what your family can do next.
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