A Bradenton nursing home fall lawyer represents residents and families when a nursing home or assisted living facility fails to prevent a fall through proper risk assessment, supervision, staffing, and safety equipment. Falls in nursing homes often cause hip fractures and head injuries, and Florida law allows families to sue when neglect played a role.
Heintz Law represents nursing home and assisted living residents and their families in Bradenton, Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch, Manatee County, and the Suncoast. Founding Partner Steven E. Heintz and our Bradenton nursing home fall attorneys handle these claims as part of the firm's nursing home abuse lawyer practice.
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☎ Call NowAfter a nursing home fall, make sure your loved one gets a full medical evaluation, including imaging if there is any pain, swelling, or confusion. Then ask the facility how the fall happened, who found your loved one, and whether a physician was called, and request the incident report and care records in writing.
Head injuries in older adults can worsen over hours or days, particularly for residents on blood thinners. New confusion, drowsiness, headache, or vomiting after a fall calls for prompt medical attention.
Falls are the leading cause of injury and injury-related death for adults 65 and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 14 million older adults, about 1 in 4, report falling each year, and the CDC reports the age-adjusted fall death rate rose 21 percent from 2018 to 2024.
Nursing home residents are at even higher risk because many have dementia, weakness, vision problems, or take medications that affect balance. That higher risk is the reason facilities are expected to plan for falls and take steps to prevent them.
Yes. Under Florida law, a resident, the resident's guardian, or the personal representative of a deceased resident's estate can sue a nursing home or assisted living facility when a fall was caused by negligence or a violation of residents' rights. Not every fall is negligence, so the question is whether the facility took reasonable steps to prevent it.
The legal duty is reasonable care, meaning the care a reasonably careful facility would provide under similar circumstances. Florida law treats a violation of residents' rights or of state and federal care standards as evidence of negligence, though the family must still connect the failure to the injury.
A nursing home fall may be caused by neglect when the facility knew or should have known the resident was at risk and failed to follow a reasonable prevention plan. Common failures include missing fall assessments, leaving high-risk residents unattended, unanswered call lights, unsafe transfers, missing equipment, and medication problems.
A resident's age, dementia, or weakness does not excuse a fall. Those conditions are the reasons the facility needed a prevention plan in the first place.
A facility should assess each resident's fall risk at admission, after a change in condition, and after any fall, then follow an individualized care plan. That plan may include scheduled toileting, assistance with walking and transfers, low beds, floor mats, bed or chair alarms, medication review, physical therapy, and proper footwear and lighting.
Federal care standards for facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid require them to keep the environment as free of accident hazards as possible and provide each resident adequate supervision and assistive devices to prevent accidents. Florida's minimum staffing rules, including at least 2.0 hours of care from certified nursing assistants per resident per day, set a floor, but residents at high risk of falling often need more help than the minimum.
Facilities generally may not use physical restraints or sedating drugs for staff convenience as a way to stop falls. Supervision and planning are what the law expects.
Nursing home falls commonly cause hip and pelvic fractures, wrist and arm fractures, spinal compression fractures, head injuries including brain bleeds, cuts and skin tears, and dislocations. For frail older adults, these injuries often lead to surgery, long hospital stays, loss of mobility, and in some cases death.
Our traumatic brain injury lawyer page explains head injuries in more detail. Long recovery after a fall also raises the risk of pressure injuries, covered on our nursing home bed sores lawyer page.
An unwitnessed fall is one where no staff member saw the resident fall, and the resident is found on the floor. Unwitnessed falls often point to a supervision problem, and they raise questions about how long the resident was on the floor, whether a head injury was missed, and whether the facility called a physician.
Facility policies usually require neurological checks after an unwitnessed fall or any fall with a possible head strike. Whether those checks were done, and when the resident was sent for imaging, can matter a great deal in a head injury case.
Under Florida law, a nursing home fall claim may be brought against the licensed facility, its management or consulting company, its managing employees, and direct caregivers. Claims against others, such as owners or parent companies, require the court's permission after a showing of evidence. Equipment makers may face separate product claims.
Visitors and staff who fall at a facility have different claims, usually under premises liability rules. Our slip and fall lawyer page covers those cases.
Important evidence includes fall risk assessments, care plans, incident reports, nursing notes, neurological check records, call light logs, staffing schedules, surveillance video, prior fall history, medication records, physical therapy notes, hospital imaging, and state inspection reports. Together they show what the facility knew and what it did.
The outside professionals we retain, such as geriatric nurses, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, and long-term care administrators, can explain what fall prevention the resident needed and how the injury changed their life.
Before filing a nursing home or assisted living lawsuit in Florida, the family must send written notice by certified mail to each prospective defendant describing the rights violated, the negligence alleged, and the injuries, with a certification from counsel that a reasonable investigation supports the claim. No suit may be filed for 75 days after notice.
During the 75 days, the facility and its insurer must evaluate the claim in good faith and either reject it or make an offer, and the parties may exchange records informally. The filing deadline is paused during this period, and the parties must attend mediation within 30 days of the facility's response.
In Florida, a nursing home or assisted living claim generally must be brought within two years of the fall or within two years of when the injury was or should have been discovered, but no later than four years after the fall. If the facility concealed what happened, the period may be extended, up to six years.
Because the pre-suit notice must be served within the deadline, families should not wait. Surveillance video and call light data may be overwritten quickly.
A resident or the resident's estate may recover medical expenses, rehabilitation costs, the cost of moving to a safer facility or arranging more care, and damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of mobility, dignity, and enjoyment of life. Punitive damages may be available in limited cases.
Factors that affect the value of a fall claim include the type and severity of the injury, surgery and recovery, prior falls the facility knew about, how clearly the records show missed care, and how well the case is prepared for trial.
When a fall leads to a resident's death, often after a hip fracture or brain bleed, Florida's nursing home and assisted living laws allow the personal representative to choose, after the verdict, between survival damages for the resident's own pain and suffering and wrongful death damages for the family's losses.
Nursing home claims are not treated as medical malpractice claims, and Florida's rule limiting recovery by adult children in medical negligence deaths does not apply to claims alleging the death of a nursing home resident under the nursing home law. Our wrongful death page explains Florida's wrongful death rules.
Often, yes. Falls frequently happen alongside other neglect, such as dehydration, untreated infections, bedsores, and residents with dementia wandering, because the same staffing and supervision gaps cause all of them. A full review of the records often reveals warning signs in the weeks before the fall.
Our Florida nursing home neglect lawyer, nursing home elopement lawyer, and assisted living infections lawyer pages cover related forms of harm.
Our Bradenton nursing home fall attorneys handle each case in stages, from first contact through evidence preservation, records review, pre-suit notice, the 75-day evaluation period, mediation, lawsuit, discovery, trial, and appeal. Every file is prepared from the start as if a jury will hear it, because the facility's view of trial risk shapes how it values the claim.
Steven E. Heintz is the Founding Partner of Heintz Law, a Bradenton firm that represents only injured people and their families. His approach is careful preparation, aggressive advocacy where the facts call for it, and trial readiness from the first conference. Settlement on the right number is welcome. Settlement that shortchanges a family is not.
Nursing home fall cases are handled on a contingency fee, so there is no fee unless there is a recovery.
If your loved one was seriously injured or killed in a fall at a nursing home or assisted living facility in Bradenton, Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch, or anywhere in Manatee County or the surrounding counties, Heintz Law can preserve the evidence, explain the pre-suit process, and protect your family's rights under Florida law.
Have our 30 years of experience in personal injury go to work for you. No fees or costs unless we get results.
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