Crowder resets post-trial motions hearing in case against Rosewood Care Center

Madison County Circuit Judge Barbara Crowder has reset an Aug. 9 hearing to Aug 26 in a six-year-old wrongful death case.

Despite a $273,607.60 plaintiff’s verdict reached March 8, both sides in the case against Rosewood Care Center are re-arguing.

Defense attorney Dennis McCubbin filed a motion for new trial on the issue of damages saying the jury’s award of $195,000 for “loss of normal life” was excessive in view of the evidence presented at trial.  The jury also awarded damages totaling $78,607 for the decedent’s pain and suffering, medical expenses and grief, sorrow and mental suffering for the decedent’s nieces.

“Defendant respectfully submits that the jury was confused,” McCubbin wrote.

All pending motions were set for discussion on Aug. 9. The next hearing will be held at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 26.

The case involves plaintiff Diana Obernuefemann who sued the Edwardsville nursing home in 2007, claiming it was negligent in the care of her aunt, Kathleen Adams.

She accused nursing home staff of placing a Duragesic narcotic patch on Adams, then 66, before removing another one that was in place as a result of a hospital stay. Adams suffered an overdose and aspiration pneumonia and died on June 7, 2006.

Plaintiff attorney Robert Gregory seeks to have prior rulings that granted summary judgment to defendants Larry Vander Maten and Darrell Hoefling as non-owners of the nursing home reversed so they would be liable for the jury verdict.

His motion argues for further proceedings to obtain “a full and complete determination of whether defendants Vander Maten and Hoefling are ‘owners’…and if so, to grant plaintiff a new trial against all defendants.”

The trial had been presided over by former Circuit Judge Ann Callis.

Madison County case number 07-L-239