An Orange County jury on Tuesday awarded $4.5 million in punitive damages to a Lake Forest couple whose 15-year-old disabled son died at a Mission Viejo live-in care facility in 2012, bringing the total the couple received from jurors to $10.2 million in the case.
The same jurors on June 25 awarded $5.7 million in actual damages to the parents of Kevin Barr, who died after staff failed to give him his anti- seizure medication and took an hour to call 911, their attorney, Eric Dubin, said.
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before reaching a verdict near the end of the day against Lonika Homes Inc., Dubin said.
“This clearly sends a message to health care providers,” Dubin told City News Service. “If we send a loved one to your facility and trust in you then you absolutely better live up to that trust, and this case was a case of broken trust and they paid a heavy price for it.”
The jurors voted unanimously for the actual and punitive damages, Dubin said.
The jurors told Dubin and Kevin Barr’s parents after the verdicts that they doubted the credibility of the company’s owner, Eleanor Del Rosario, and her son, Christopher Distor, who was faulted for failing to give Kevin his medication, Dubin said.
“They thought the owner and her son were total liars,” Dubin said. “The post-death concealment was a really big issue with them. They really just felt there was no compassion and this lady was treating the health care facility almost like a 7-Eleven franchise.”
Jurors deliberated for about 5 1/2 hours before reaching a verdict on actual damages in the wrongful death lawsuit. They found for the plaintiffs on wrongful death as well as claims of concealment after the death and willful misconduct before the death.
Because the jury found for the plaintiffs on the concealment claim, the panel was not bound by medical malpractice caps on damages, Dubin said.
Dubin put on evidence today that Lonika Homes grossed $2 million annually for five of the company’s 11 homes.
Kevin Barr was born at 25 weeks, and was just a shade over a pound, his parents, Mark and Michele Barr said. He had cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder, but he was otherwise happy, according to his parents.
Kevin had been in the facility for about six years.
Attorney Tom Beach, who represented Lonika Homes, argued that Kevin did not miss a dose of medicine and denied the claims of a one-hour delay in calling 911, saying the teen was found unresponsive at 4:10 a.m. Feb. 7, 2012, with authorities called nine minutes later.
Beach also unsuccessfully argued before the jury that Kevin Barr’s seizure was not due to a missed dose of medicine, but was a “breakthrough seizure” that couldn’t be arrested by medicine. He claimed it was a syndrome called Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy Patients, or SUDEP.
After today’s verdict, “there were hugs and tears” with the Barrs, Dubin said.
“And then we got a chance to talk to the jury and it was more hugs and tears,” Dubin said.
Dubin argued that Lonika Homes staff and officials started covering up evidence of the missed dosing of medication after the teen died.
Dubin argued the medication was destroyed so no one could count how many were left and that officials lied about the lack of training in CPR that the teen’s caregiver had so the death would be written off as due to natural causes and an autopsy would not be done.
An Orange County sheriff’s deputy who responded to the scene was not told of the missed dose of medicine and testified he would have notified the coroner of that, Dubin argued.
Various experts testified that the delay in calling 911 and no immediate attempts to revive the teen contributed to the death, Dubin argued.
Michele and Mark Barr spent about a year conducting their own investigating to find out what happened, they said.
Michele Barr said they saw Kevin the night before he died and, “He was fine.”
— City News Service