A state appeals court panel has upheld a judge’s decision to dismiss criminal charges against the Irvine-based Silverado Senior Living Management Inc. and three of its managers in connection with the COVID-related deaths of a nurse and 13 people who lived at a residential care facility in Los Angeles, according to court records obtained Thursday.
In a ruling Wednesday, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected an appeal filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office involving the October 2023 dismissal of the case.
The appellate court panel noted in its 14-page ruling that the issue in the appeal is “whether statements made by the administrator of a residential care facility for the elderly (RCFE) to state regulators investigating resident deaths during a March 2020 COVID-19 outbreak are protected under the Fifth Amendment.”
“The trial court found the administrator’s statements were compelled and that the Fifth Amendment precluded their use in subsequent criminal proceedings. The trial court further found the prosecution failed to prove that its case relied on evidence wholly independent of the compelled testimony and dismissed the action against all defendants,” the panel noted. “We affirm the trial court’s evidentiary ruling and dismissal order.”
Silverado Senior Living Management, Inc. and three of its executives were charged in 2023 with 13 felony counts of elder endangerment and five felony counts of violation causing death.
“We are obviously very disappointed at the court’s ruling. Our belief in the strength of the case has not changed,” the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement released after the case was dismissed.
In its own statement in 2023, Silverado Memory Care noted that the charges were “summarily dismissed without ever getting to trial.”
“These charges were brought forth by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office earlier this year in an egregious attack on not just our organization, but our courageous caregivers,” according to the company’s statement. “The judge dismissed all charges against Silverado, leaving Silverado to question why the charges were filed to begin with, which consumed valuable resources in an already overloaded legal system.”
The investigation into Silverado Beverly Place was launched after the facility reported the April 20, 2020, death of a 32-year-old employee, Brittany Ringo, then-Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said when he announced the charges.
“As required by the protocols at the time, the facility was closed to outside visitors by Silverado in March of 2020. Yet, despite these protocols, an exception was made to admit a patient from New York,” Gascón said then. “Ms. Ringo died from COVID-19 after being exposed while working as a licensed vocational nurse for Silverado when she was directed on March 19, 2020, to admit this new resident who came directly to the facility from the airport. This individual had just arrived from a clinical setting in New York — a COVID-19 hot-spot at the time.”
Gascón said then that the new resident — who began displaying COVID-19 symptoms the morning after arriving and tested positive that evening — had not immediately been tested for COVID-19 and had not been required to quarantine in isolation prior to admission as required by health protocols in place at the time.
“Those protocols were intended to slow the spread of this dangerous virus, especially while working with vulnerable populations. We have evidence to support that the protocols were not followed due to financial considerations of accepting this patient from New York,” Gascón alleged.
Ringo tested positive for COVID-19 six days after the new resident’s arrival and died less than a month later, with 13 of the facility’s residents dying and more than 100 other residents and staff members being diagnosed with COVID-19 as a result of the outbreak, according to Gascón.
The other people who died were identified as Elizabeth Cohen, Joseph Manduke, Catherine Apothaker, Jake Khorsandi, Albert Sarnoff, Dolores Sarnoff, Myrna Frank, Frank Piumetti, Jay Tedeman, Luba Paz, Kaye Kiddoo, Richard Herman and Michael Horn.
“We do not have to prove that COVID was brought in by this particular patient,” said Marc Beaart, the DA’s director of fraud and corruption prosecutions. “We simply have to show there was a positive test and that the protocols were not followed.”
Jeff Frum, senior vice president of sales & marketing for Silverado, said in a 2023 statement that the company “denies all charges filed against us — they are baseless and egregiously contradict the facts. We look forward to presenting our case during the legal process.
“We will always grieve the loss of the residents to the pandemic and the frontline hero who cared for them,” Frum said. “We have taken the pandemic extremely seriously since the start. We recognized COVID-19’s unprecedented threat to society, particularly for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Silverado was a leader in developing protocols for people living with dementia and many of these same protocols became standards for the entire memory care industry.”