Patients are evacuated after losing power at Krystal Bay Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, located at 16650 W. Dixie Hwy., on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, in North Miami Beach, Florida.
David Santiago
dsantiago@elnuevoherald.com
Eighty-two-year-old Horace Brakes Jr.’s children say their father was so badly neglected at Krystal Bay Nursing and Rehabilitation in North Miami Beach that he died from severe pressure wounds on his body.
In February, three years after Brakes’ death, a Miami-Dade County jury returned a $14.7 million verdict against the nursing home owner and management company. The double-digit verdict is one of the largest against a nursing home in Miami-Dade County and represents money owed to the family for their father’s wrongful death.
Now starts the process of collecting on the verdict, an undertaking that has frustrated families like Horace Brakes’. In Florida, collecting on a jury award against a nursing home can be a legal marathon. The state remains a high-stakes environment where large verdicts against long-term care facilities are increasingly common, but so are the corporate maneuvers to avoid paying them, according to attorneys who specialize in nursing home neglect cases.