Georgia Nursing Home Abuse Case Law: 30 Court Decisions Protecting the Elderly

Georgia gives residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities a statutory Bill of Rights, and it gives them and their families the same negligence claims that any injured person has. The claims behind the decisions below include alleged neglect that led to pressure ulcers, falls and untreated fractures, attacks and an alleged sexual battery by other residents, and, in one case, allegations of long-term abuse and neglect tied to an owner’s underfunding of the facility. The 30 appellate decisions below show how those claims are tested in court: whether a complaint needs an expert’s affidavit, what a jury may hear about staffing, violence and records, whether a relative’s signature at admission sent the case to arbitration, which company can be sued and where, how a partial settlement and the filing deadlines work, and how a 2020 statute limited claims arising from COVID-19.

The title of this page speaks of protection. By this page’s count, 16 of the decisions favored the resident or the family on the question appealed: a verdict for a resident who developed a Stage IV pressure ulcer was affirmed, summary judgments against residents who fell were reversed, and arbitration agreements signed by relatives who were not shown to have authority to bind the resident were not enforced. Eleven favored the facility or its owners, including the Supreme Court of Georgia’s holding that wrongful death beneficiaries are bound by an arbitration agreement governed by the Federal Arbitration Act and signed for the resident under a power of attorney, and three were split. Each summary reports what the court decided and links to the opinion in the Caselaw Access Project’s reporter text or in the court’s own PDF as archived by CourtListener.

A Note on Statutes and Dates

Several decisions below quote the Bill of Rights for Residents of Long-Term Care Facilities, OCGA § 31-8-100 et seq., and the expert affidavit statute, OCGA § 9-11-9.1, as those statutes read when each case was decided. The provisions quoted or described below, OCGA §§ 9-9-62, 29-4-23 (a) (4), 31-8-58 and 31-8-126 (a), were compared with the text published by FindLaw as current on March 28, 2024, and are consistent with it, and the annual summaries of general statutes enacted in 2024, 2025 and 2026 list no amendment to them. The 2026 summary lists an amendment to § 9-11-9.1 by House Bill 185, which changed that statute’s entry for dietitians. The evidence rulings below applied the rules of evidence in force when each case was decided. In 2025 Georgia enacted Senate Bill 68, which changed several rules that apply in civil lawsuits; none of the decisions below applies it.

The Residents’ Bill of Rights and Nursing Home Regulations

The Bill of Rights for Residents of Long-Term Care Facilities provides, in the words the courts quoted, that “[e]ach resident shall receive care, treatment, and services which are adequate and appropriate,” provided “[i]n compliance with applicable laws and regulations.” The five decisions below concern when a claim under the Bill of Rights, or a negligence claim built on nursing home regulations, can go forward.

1. Thurman v. Pruitt Corp. (1994)

Thurman v. Pruitt Corp., 212 Ga. App. 766, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 16, 1994

The complaint alleged that inadequate care at Fort Oglethorpe Nursing Home, operated by the Pruitt Corporation, caused Dentis Thurman to develop gangrene, which ultimately caused his death. The expert affidavit, signed by a registered nurse, described failures to care for his feet and legs after his hip was broken, weight loss from inadequate feeding and other below-standard nursing care. The trial court found the nurse not competent as an expert and dismissed the complaint.

Five judges of the Court of Appeals voted to reverse and four dissented. The majority held that the nurse, who according to her affidavit was qualified as a specialist in wound treatment, was prima facie qualified to give an opinion on the care the home’s nursing staff provided, and that the trial court also erred in dismissing the separate claim under OCGA § 31-8-126 (a), which, the court wrote, “provides a cause of action for damages against a long-term care facility for failure to provide certain rights guaranteed under OCGA § 31-8-100 et seq.”

2. McLain v. Mariner Health Care (2006)

McLain v. Mariner Health Care, Inc., 279 Ga. App. 410, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided May 15, 2006

Judy McLain alleged that violations of federal Medicare and Medicaid regulations, the Bill of Rights and state nursing home rules led to her father’s pneumonia, complications and death at a nursing home owned and operated by Mariner. The trial court dismissed four of her counts; on appeal she challenged the dismissal of two of them, negligence and negligence per se.

Both counts were reinstated. The complaint did not try to state a private cause of action under the Medicare and Medicaid statutes, so the trial court’s ruling on that point addressed “a matter not in actual controversy.” Taking the alleged injuries as true, as the court does at the motion to dismiss stage, the Court of Appeals held that McLain’s father belonged to the class of persons the statutes and regulations were meant to protect, that the injuries were among those they were designed to prevent, and that the alleged violations “would be competent evidence of Mariner’s breach of duty under a traditional negligence action.”

3. Brown v. Tift Health Care (2006)

Brown v. Tift Health Care, Inc., 279 Ga. App. 164, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided May 3, 2006

Irma Young, who was 81, fell while a Tift employee was helping her in the restroom. Her son’s complaint alleged that she was not checked for injuries or promptly seen by a doctor, and that an X-ray two months later revealed an untreated fracture in her leg. The trial court dismissed his Bill of Rights and negligence claims because no expert affidavit was filed.

The dismissal stood as to the allegations about failing to check for injuries and to assure proper medical attention, which the Court of Appeals found analogous to claims held to involve professional medical decision-making. The allegation that her fall was not properly documented, however, challenged “nonprofessional, administrative acts or omissions,” and the claims could go forward “only insofar as they involve the nonprofessional, administrative aspects of documenting Young’s fall.” The judgment was affirmed in part and reversed in part.

4. Williams v. Alvista Healthcare Center (2007)

Williams v. Alvista Healthcare Center, Inc., 283 Ga. App. 613, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided February 16, 2007

Estelle Stanford complained of chest pains at the Alvista nursing home, and a doctor prescribed a medication. According to the home’s medication administration records, she was to receive it at 8:00 a.m. on June 25, 2002, but did not, and she died on June 26. Her children alleged that the missed medication, and a failure to document her chest pain as state regulations required, contributed to her death.

Administering medication “involves the professional skill and judgment of a nurse,” the Court of Appeals held, so that claim was properly dismissed for lack of an expert affidavit. The documentation claim, brought under the Bill of Rights, could proceed “to the extent that they can show Alvista failed to properly perform the nonprofessional, administrative aspects of documenting Stanford’s complaints, and to the extent that such failure resulted in a regulatory violation leading to Stanford’s injuries as alleged in the complaint.” The dismissal of claims against two individual defendants who had never been served was affirmed on laches grounds.

5. Padgett v. Baxley & Appling County Hospital Authority (2013)

Padgett v. Baxley & Appling County Hospital Authority, 321 Ga. App. 66, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 29, 2013

Juanita Walls, who had Alzheimer’s disease, was placed in a shower chair so that a certified nursing assistant could bathe her. The CNA turned around to put Walls’s underwear in a plastic bag and turned back to see her on the shower floor; Walls died a week later. Her daughter sued for professional negligence, ordinary negligence, breach of contract and violation of the Bill of Rights, and the trial court granted the nursing home summary judgment on every claim.

Only the ordinary negligence ruling was reversed. A CNA is not one of the professionals covered by the affidavit statute, and the negligence Padgett alleged, using a shower chair that was too large and leaving her mother unattended, did “not turn on a medical question,” in the words of an earlier decision the court quoted, so a jury could decide without expert help whether the CNA exercised due care. The court affirmed on the Bill of Rights claim: under a standard it quoted from an earlier decision, Padgett had to show that the CNA “failed to do something which a reasonable person, guided by the above considerations which ordinarily regulated the conduct of affairs of a nursing home, would have done,” and the record contained no evidence of that. The other two judges on the panel concurred only in the judgment on the ordinary negligence ruling.

Professional Judgment or Ordinary Care

As Brown v. Tift Health Care put it, quoting an earlier decision, an expert affidavit “is required when the issue is a defendant’s compliance with a professional standard of conduct, but when professional judgment and skill are not involved, a § 9-11-9.1 affidavit is not required.” The three decisions below turned on whether staff failed to carry out an instruction already given or whether the instruction itself was in question.

6. Davis v. First Healthcare Corp. (1998)

Davis v. First Healthcare Corp., 234 Ga. App. 744, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 16, 1998

Elsie Davis, who had Alzheimer’s-type dementia and problems with her balance, was found on the floor beside her bed at Savannah Convalescent Center. The family’s only specific allegation was that staff failed to restrain her as a physician had ordered. The trial court treated that as ordinary negligence, then granted summary judgment after finding that there was no specific order to restrain her while in bed on that day, as the medical director had testified.

The Court of Appeals reversed. A medication record the nursing home had produced in discovery, showing a December 1993 order for a “vest restraint while in bed at night time,” was authenticated by circumstantial evidence, including the fact that the home itself produced it; whether production of this kind can authenticate a document was, the court said, an issue of first impression in Georgia. The record created a genuine issue of material fact “as to whether the nursing home staff was ordered to restrain Ms. Davis while she was in bed on January 13, 1994, and whether they were negligent in failing to do so.”

7. Gaddis v. Chatsworth Health Care Center (2006)

Gaddis v. Chatsworth Health Care Center, Inc., 282 Ga. App. 615, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided November 29, 2006

Dorothy Stone, an Alzheimer’s patient, fell three times over two days at Chatsworth’s nursing home, and the third fall resulted in severe injuries to her eye, face and head. Her children argued that the home failed to follow written instructions from the hospital emergency room to take “fall precautions” after she returned. They had not filed an expert affidavit.

Summary judgment for the home was affirmed. The hospital records showed only a general instruction, and “the decision over what specific fall precautions to take was left to the medical judgment of the Chatsworth medical staff,” which the court found did not materially differ from an earlier case treating a failure to implement a fall-risk protocol as professional negligence. Even if the children had stated an ordinary negligence claim, the court held, they presented no evidence to support it.

8. Holt v. Glenwood Operating Company (2024)

Holt v. Glenwood Operating Company, LLC, No. A23A1435, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided February 8, 2024

Doris Holt’s hospital records, forwarded to Glenwood, indicated that she needed two people to roll or turn in bed. Her care plan called for the assistance of one staff member for grooming and hygiene, and the “care card” given to her caregivers called for one staff member for a bed bath. While a certified nursing assistant was giving her a bed bath alone, Mrs. Holt grabbed the partial bed rail and rolled off the bed. Glenwood’s post-fall review concluded that she required two staff members. After her death, the plaintiffs sued for ordinary negligence only, without an expert affidavit, claiming the CNA had not followed an instruction to use two people.

The Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Glenwood. The CNA “was instructed that no assistance was required, and she did not violate any instructions for Mrs. Holt’s care.” Any claim that Glenwood should have instructed her differently “would transform this case into one of professional negligence requiring the contemporaneous filing of an OCGA § 9-11-9.1 affidavit,” and the plaintiffs had conceded that they were not pursuing a professional negligence claim.

Pressure Ulcers, Staffing, Violence and Unsafe Conditions

Two of the four decisions below are appeals from jury verdicts that turned on evidence rulings, one involving a pressure ulcer and one involving attacks by other patients; the other two are premises liability decisions involving doors.

9. Tucker Nursing Center v. Mosby (2010)

Tucker Nursing Center, Inc. v. Mosby, 303 Ga. App. 80, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 24, 2010

Melvin Raybon developed a Stage IV decubitus ulcer on his left buttock while he was a resident at Tucker Nursing. The plaintiff contended that he was not regularly turned and repositioned and that the ulcer was not properly treated, leading to complications that included sepsis, malnutrition, a colostomy, feeding tubes and surgical debridements. The administrator of his estate sued for negligence and violations of the Bill of Rights, and a jury awarded $1,250,000.

The verdict was affirmed. Former certified nursing assistants who were directly involved in patient care while Raybon was a resident testified that the facility lacked enough staff to turn or reposition him every two hours as his condition required, that they lacked supplies, and that residents, including Raybon, were seen soiled with urine and waste. The court found no abuse of discretion in admitting that testimony and rejected the argument that it was not “directly” relevant to the claim that these conditions led to his ulcer. It also upheld the admission, as rebuttal, of testimony from a CNA who had cared for him and contradicted the home’s evidence that he was turned at least every two hours.

10. Coastal Health Services v. Rozier (1985)

Coastal Health Services, Inc. v. Rozier, 176 Ga. App. 240, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided September 26, 1985

Fannie Murray, who was 85, had chronic brain syndrome and a propensity to wander, and her physician advised restraint on an “as needed” basis. On three occasions she was injured by other patients at the Ware Manor nursing home after wandering into their rooms. A jury returned a verdict of $85,698.63 for her estate.

Evidence bearing on the home’s notice was properly admitted: one patient’s account, given on admission, of an earlier violent episode was admissible not as proof of the earlier incident but to show the home’s notice of the possibility of violent behavior, and psychological evaluations of the two patients were admissible to show the home had been put on notice at least to investigate that possibility. The Court of Appeals reversed, however, because a lengthy report by the local ombudsman, who did not testify, was admitted in its entirety although it was “replete with inadmissible hearsay,” and the court could not conclude that the report did not affect the verdict. OCGA § 31-8-58, the court held, “merely removes the problem of confidentiality” in allowing disclosure of such investigative information in court, and “does not eliminate application of the regular rules of evidence.” A retrial was necessary.

11. Carlo v. Americana Healthcare Corp. (1986)

Carlo v. Americana Healthcare Corp., 179 Ga. App. 678, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 18, 1986

A patient walking down a nursing home hallway was struck and knocked to the floor when another patient threw open a restroom door that opened outward into the hallway. The trial court granted summary judgment to the operator after finding that the door complied with a state regulation providing that “[e]xit doors, other than for living units, shall swing in the direction of exit from the structure.”

The regulation did not end the case. Reading its “exit doors” as seemingly intended to refer only to doors that lead directly outside, the Court of Appeals reversed and held that it could not say, as a matter of law, that a jury would not be authorized to find it negligent “to maintain a door which opens directly out into the corridor of a nursing home so as to cause the fall of a passing patient.” There was no evidence that she knew the door might be thrown into her path, or that she could or should have avoided passing it in the normal course of her routine as an ambulatory resident.

12. Traver v. Felton Manor (2022)

Traver v. Felton Manor, LLC, No. A22A0861, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided August 23, 2022

Richard Baney, a 91-year-old resident of Felton Manor, a licensed personal care home, walked with a rollator. He pressed the button for the automatic front doors, stopped to answer another resident who asked him the time, and then went through the doors, which closed on him and caused him to fall; he broke his hip. The doors had no sensor to keep them open while someone was in the doorway, and their force had been tested only by the maintenance worker who installed them, letting them close against himself.

The Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment for Felton Manor. Residents of a care provider are generally considered its invitees, and jury questions remained both on whether Felton Manor had superior knowledge that the doors posed a hazard to its residents and on whether Baney failed to exercise ordinary care for his own safety.

Arbitration Agreements Signed at Admission

Ten of the decisions on this page concern arbitration agreements signed when a resident was admitted. The courts asked who signed and under what authority, whom the agreement binds, whether its terms were unconscionable, and whether it could be carried out. Four of the ten were decided in the facility’s favor and six in favor of the resident or the family.

13. United Health Services of Georgia v. Norton (2017)

United Health Services of Georgia, Inc. v. Norton, 300 Ga. 736, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided March 6, 2017

When Lola Norton was admitted to PruittHealth-Toccoa, Kim Norton, as her general power of attorney, signed an arbitration agreement that expressly extended to any “parent, spouse, child, executor, administrator, heir, or survivor entitled to bring a wrongful death claim.” After Lola’s death, a wrongful death action was brought for her husband, Bernard, and the Court of Appeals held that her beneficiaries were not required to arbitrate their wrongful death claims.

The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed. Because a wrongful death action is “wholly derivative of a decedent’s right of action,” any defense good against the decedent is good against the beneficiaries, and the duty to arbitrate is such a defense. The Court held that an arbitration agreement governed by the Federal Arbitration Act, entered into by the decedent or her power of attorney and binding the decedent and her estate, “does bind the decedent’s beneficiaries with respect to their wrongful death claims.”

14. CL SNF v. Fountain (2021)

CL SNF, LLC v. Fountain, 312 Ga. 416, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided September 21, 2021

Minnie Fountain, the court-appointed guardian of her adult nephew, Leroy Wiggins, signed an admission agreement with an arbitration clause and a separate arbitration agreement when he entered a skilled nursing facility. The separate agreement stated that signing it was not a precondition to admission and that it could be revoked by written notice within 30 days. Fountain later sued the facility and its management over alleged sexual battery of Wiggins by another resident, and the Court of Appeals held that neither her letters of guardianship nor the Guardianship Code authorized her to agree to arbitration.

The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed, holding that the Guardianship Code “grants a guardian authority to enter into a binding pre-dispute arbitration agreement where the exercise of such power is reasonably necessary to provide adequately for the ward’s support, care, health, and welfare,” under the provision allowing a guardian to exercise “those other powers reasonably necessary” for the ward, OCGA § 29-4-23 (a) (4). The Court expressed no opinion on whether signing was a proper exercise of her discretion and fiduciary duties, or whether the agreement was otherwise unenforceable.

15. CL SNF v. Fountain (2022)

CL SNF, LLC v. Fountain, No. A20A0773, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 21, 2022

On remand, the Court of Appeals adopted the Supreme Court’s opinion as its own and took up the trial court’s ruling that the arbitration agreement was unconscionable. The trial court had called it “decidedly one-sided” because it required residents to give up a jury trial for any claim arising from their stay while, in the trial court’s reading, the facility kept its right to a jury trial in disputes not involving nursing home fees.

That ruling was reversed. The Court of Appeals read the agreement’s coverage of “any and all claims or controversies,” with a list introduced by “including, without limitation,” more broadly than the trial court had, and held that the terms were not “so one-sided as to be unconscionable.” It affirmed the rejection of her other challenges to the agreement’s validity. On her argument that arbitration would prevent vindication of Wiggins’s rights under the Bill of Rights, on which the trial court had not issued a definitive ruling, the court added that the agreement “does not preclude Fountain from pursuing any substantive rights that may be afforded by the statute; it only requires the resolution of those rights in an arbitral, rather than a judicial, forum.”

16. Triad Health Management of Georgia v. Johnson (2009)

Triad Health Management of Georgia, III, LLC v. Johnson, 298 Ga. App. 204, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 3, 2009

Anthony Johnson signed a nursing home admission contract containing an arbitration clause as “Fiduciary Party” for his father, Matthew Johnson, who was incapacitated and did not sign. According to the complaint, the father developed bed sores that led to sepsis and his death, and the son sued. The trial court refused to compel arbitration.

A general power of attorney made the difference. The son’s power of attorney gave him “full power and authority to do and perform all and every act,” and signing the admission contract for his incapacitated father was “necessary, requisite or proper” within that authority, so the Court of Appeals held the father bound and reversed. It also held that the Federal Arbitration Act governed the contract and preempted OCGA § 9-9-62, which provides, among other things, that “no agreement to arbitrate shall be enforceable unless the agreement was made subsequent to the alleged malpractice and after a dispute or controversy has occurred and unless the claimant is represented by an attorney at law at the time the agreement is entered into.”

17. Life Care Centers of America v. Smith (2009)

Life Care Centers of America v. Smith, 298 Ga. App. 739, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 18, 2009

Gerith Petereit was admitted to Life Care Center of Gwinnett after a stroke. She had been there less than a month when she suffered a blow to the head and died from the resulting brain damage. Her daughter, Angela Smith, had signed the admission forms and an arbitration agreement under a durable health care power of attorney.

This health care power of attorney was not enough, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the refusal to compel arbitration. The power of attorney’s broad grant was, in its own words, “so that your agent will have authority to make any decision you could make to obtain or terminate any type of health care,” and its plain language “did not give Smith the power to sign away her mother’s or her mother’s legal representative’s right to a jury trial.” The court distinguished Triad, which involved a general power of attorney.

18. McKean v. GGNSC Atlanta (2014)

McKean v. GGNSC Atlanta, LLC, 329 Ga. App. 507, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided November 7, 2014

Dwayne McKean signed an alternative dispute resolution agreement on the day his mother, Patricia, was admitted to a Golden Living Center nursing home; she had not given anyone a power of attorney. Nineteen days later she executed a durable power of attorney naming him and authorizing him, among other things, to sign arbitration agreements. The trial court compelled arbitration of his wrongful death suit.

The Court of Appeals reversed. There was no evidence that his mother gave him express or apparent authority when he signed, and his own act of signing could not create an agency. The later power of attorney did not ratify the earlier agreement: the court did “not agree that a principal necessarily ratifies prior acts by the attorney-in-fact when a principal grants someone power of attorney to perform those acts on behalf of the principal in the future.” Because the admission agreement was not in the record, the court also could not conclude that she accepted the benefits of the arbitration agreement by accepting nursing home care.

19. United Health Services of Georgia v. Alexander (2017)

United Health Services of Georgia, Inc. v. Alexander, 342 Ga. App. 1, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 22, 2017

When Doris Alexander was admitted to PruittHealth-Forsyth, her daughter Carol signed an optional arbitration agreement on the line for the patient’s signature. Doris Alexander was not present, never saw or discussed the agreement, and had not executed a power of attorney or other written authorization.

The refusal to compel arbitration was affirmed. The daughter’s earlier signing of medical forms for her mother did not show that the mother had given her general authority to act “without limitation,” the nursing home’s own representative testified that she knew the daughter had no power of attorney, and manifestations of authority “arising only through the words or acts of the purported agent are insufficient.” Because no valid agreement to arbitrate was formed, “the federal policy in favor of arbitration does not control.”

20. Ashburn Health Care Center v. Poole (2007)

Ashburn Health Care Center, Inc. v. Poole, 286 Ga. App. 24, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 20, 2007

When Mrs. Poole was admitted to the Ashburn nursing home, her husband signed the admission documents, including an arbitration agreement, on the “authorized representative” line, outside the facility and outside her presence. She later fractured her hip at the nursing home and died after being moved to a hospital. The trial court found the agreement valid but refused to compel arbitration, concluding that the home had waived its arbitration rights; it had waited more than three months, while taking part in discovery, before moving to compel.

The agreement itself was not valid, the Court of Appeals held, affirming on that different ground. The nursing home had conceded below “that marriage alone does not establish an agency relationship between spouses,” signing on the “authorized representative” line could not establish agency, and there was no showing that Mrs. Poole knew of the agreement or authorized her husband to sign it. The home “failed to establish that Henry Poole acted with actual or apparent authority in signing the arbitration agreement.”

21. C.R. of Thomasville v. Hannaford (2022)

C.R. of Thomasville, LLC v. Hannaford, No. A22A0094, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided April 5, 2022

Judy Hannaford had given her husband, Leo, a power of attorney in 1996. When she was admitted to a skilled nursing facility in 2017, he signed the admission agreement, which contained an arbitration clause. Under his signature, the box checked was “Spouse” under “Responsible Party,” and none of the options under “Legal Representative,” including agent under a power of attorney, was selected. It appeared to be undisputed that the defendants did not know of the power of attorney when he signed.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the refusal to compel arbitration. “Absent evidence that Leo was intentionally or affirmatively exercising his authority under the POA,” and given the evidence to the contrary on the face of the agreement and in his affidavit, the defendants did not meet their burden of establishing an enforceable agreement to arbitrate. The court distinguished an earlier decision that had held a resident bound by an agreement his son signed as a “Fiduciary Party” while the father was incapacitated: no party pointed to evidence that Judy was incapacitated, and the court held that a power of attorney between spouses, standing alone, was insufficient to bind the principal under the facts of the case. It construed any potential ambiguity against the defendants as the drafters and expressed no opinion on OCGA § 9-9-62 or on unconscionability.

22. Miller v. GGNSC Atlanta (2013)

Miller v. GGNSC Atlanta, LLC, 323 Ga. App. 114, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 16, 2013

When Michael Miller was admitted to Golden Living Center-Northside in January 2010, he signed an arbitration agreement in the admissions packet. It required that disputes “shall be resolved exclusively by binding arbitration” under the National Arbitration Forum’s Code of Procedure, but almost six months before he signed, the forum had entered a consent judgment agreeing not to administer consumer arbitrations. The trial court found the agreement enforceable but denied the motion to compel arbitration because there was a jury question whether Miller was legally competent to sign it; he said he had just undergone two major surgeries and was under the influence of narcotic pain medication.

Adopting the test that asks whether the chosen forum is an integral term of the agreement or an “ancillary logistical concern,” the Court of Appeals held that the forum’s designation was integral. Section 5 of the Federal Arbitration Act, which in some circumstances allows a court to name a substitute arbitrator, therefore did not apply, and the agreement was impossible to enforce and void. The court vacated the trial court’s order, remanded, and dismissed as moot the nursing home’s cross-appeal on Miller’s competency.

Owners, Operators and Where the Case Is Heard

A nursing home may be one of several related companies. The three decisions below concern a default judgment against an owner and his companies, a parent company outside Georgia, and the venue of a suit against related entities.

23. Forum Group at Moran Lake Nursing & Rehabilitation Center v. Terhune (2012)

Forum Group at Moran Lake Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, LLC v. Terhune, 318 Ga. App. 281, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 31, 2012

Morris Ellison, 80, was a long-term resident of Moran Lake when an untreated hip fracture was diagnosed; he died in hospice care ten days later. His daughter, Loretta Terhune, alleged that he died from long-term abuse and neglect caused in part by the owner George Houser’s “systemic underfunding of the facility,” and that Houser had transferred assets among his companies and commingled business and personal assets. None of the defendants answered within thirty days; the trial court granted default judgment on liability and struck Houser’s answer for discovery violations, so the trial concerned damages only.

A jury awarded $2,842,180.11 in compensatory damages, trebled by operation of law because of Houser’s intentional violation of the Fair Business Practices Act, and $35 million in punitive damages. The Court of Appeals found no error and affirmed, rejecting Houser’s challenges to the striking of his answer, the refusal to remove a juror and several evidentiary rulings; most of them failed because he did not support them with citations to the record or had not raised them in the trial court.

24. Drumm Corp. v. Wright (2014)

Drumm Corp. v. Wright, 326 Ga. App. 41, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 6, 2014

Billy Wright suffered a fall that led to his death while he was a resident of a nursing home in Rome, Georgia. His widow sued the nursing home, an employee and seven other entities, including Drumm, alleging corporate negligence, ordinary negligence, violation of the Bill of Rights, medical malpractice, fraud and wrongful death. Drumm, a Delaware holding company several corporate layers above the nursing home’s operator, moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Drumm lacked sufficient minimum contacts with Georgia, the Court of Appeals held, and it reversed the denial of the motion. The court found persuasive decisions from other jurisdictions holding that filing a consolidated tax return for subsidiaries is not alone enough, and it held that testimony about Drumm’s officers and a board’s review of consolidated budgets did not rebut the affidavit that Drumm was a holding company that did not exercise control over its subsidiaries.

25. Andrews v. Blue Ridge NH Associates (2019)

Andrews v. Blue Ridge NH Associates, LLC, No. A19A1916, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided November 4, 2019

Donna Andrews, administrator of Johnny Lee Fleak’s estate, sued the companies she alleged owned, operated or managed two nursing homes where he received care, filing in DeKalb County, where two of the companies had registered offices. After staying discovery, the trial court dismissed two companies as improper parties based on their affidavits and on what it treated as an admission by her counsel at the hearing, ruled that venue in DeKalb County failed, and transferred the case to Whitfield County.

Each of those rulings was reversed or vacated. The dismissal was in effect a summary judgment entered without the discovery Andrews had requested, her counsel’s statement at the hearing was not a binding admission, and Blue Ridge Associates was still a DeKalb County resident when she sued, because its change of registered office did not take effect until March 15, 2018, the day after the complaint was filed. Because those errors affected the transfer ruling, the Court of Appeals vacated it and remanded for reconsideration of the statutory factors, expressing no opinion on how the trial court should weigh them.

Records, Settlements, Deadlines and Immunity

The five decisions below concern a family’s access to incident reports, a partial settlement, the medical malpractice deadlines that can apply to nursing home claims, and a 2020 statute that limited liability for COVID-19 claims.

26. Peacock v. HCP III Eastman (1998)

Peacock v. HCP III Eastman, Inc., 230 Ga. App. 726, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided February 4, 1998

Curtis Peacock placed his mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, at Heart of Georgia Nursing Home and later sued over her care, including an injury that bruised her face and broke the skin; he testified that the staff initially told him no one knew what had happened. At trial the court refused to enforce his notice to produce the home’s incident reports from January 1991 through March 1993, and the jury returned a verdict for the defendants.

The Court of Appeals reversed. It relied on an earlier decision allowing a family to obtain a personal care home’s incident and accident reports, which, in that decision’s words, “could show [the home] had notice its employees were not properly supervising residents,” and held that Peacock should have been allowed to obtain the reports for the whole 26-month period his mother lived at the home. That earlier decision had also said that a trial court could protect other residents’ privacy by reviewing such records in camera and limiting their use.

27. Barnum v. Coastal Health Services (2007)

Barnum v. Coastal Health Services, Inc., 288 Ga. App. 209, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided November 2, 2007

The estate of Jimmy Barnum contended that after a stroke, negligent nursing care at Waycross Health and Rehabilitation Center left him malnourished and dehydrated and caused pressure ulcers, including one at his tailbone that became septic and caused his death. The operator apparently had one insurer before July 1, 2001, and another after. The estate settled for $75,000 all claims for care on or before that date, expressly reserving claims arising after it, and the operator then moved for summary judgment on the ground that the settlement resolved everything.

The settlement did not end the case. The agreement “clearly was intended to reserve some of the claims,” the Court of Appeals held in affirming the denial of that motion, and by entering a partial settlement the operator waived any objection to the splitting of the claims. An expert’s testimony that the tailbone ulcer was healing in early July 2001 and later deteriorated through negligent care also raised a fact question whether a wrongful death claim rested solely on care after that date. In the estate’s separate appeal, the court upheld reopening discovery so the operator could depose the estate’s experts, but vacated the ruling on who pays for those depositions because the trial court did not use the proper test.

28. Carr v. Kindred Healthcare Operating (2008)

Carr v. Kindred Healthcare Operating, Inc., 293 Ga. App. 80, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 2, 2008

The mother of Jacqueline Carr and Frank McCray lived at a Warner Robins nursing home until April 2000, when she was moved to a hospital and died. Her children sued in 2002 for breach of contract and violation of the Bill of Rights, with a registered nurse’s affidavit attached; the action was dismissed without prejudice in May 2005 and refiled nine days later, more than five years after her death.

The refiled claims were barred, and summary judgment for the defendants was affirmed. “[T]he complaint’s characterization of the claims as professional or ordinary negligence does not control,” the Court of Appeals wrote, and these claims, alleging nursing services below the standard of care and “chemically restraining” the resident, questioned professional judgment, so they were medical malpractice claims subject to the five-year statute of repose. The renewal statute did not save them; quoting the Supreme Court of Georgia, the court wrote that “the legislature never intended for the dismissal and renewal statutes to overcome the [five-year] statute of repose.” The children’s argument that summary judgment came too early, before any discovery, also failed, because they had not invoked the provision of the summary judgment statute that allows a party opposing the motion to ask for time to obtain evidence.

29. Dove v. Ty Cobb Healthcare Systems (2010)

Dove v. Ty Cobb Healthcare Systems, Inc., 305 Ga. App. 13, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 8, 2010

Ann Royston Dove’s mother lived at Brown Memorial Convalescent Center from 2000 until her death in 2007. Dove recalled broken hips, weight loss, bedsores and other incidents over those years, sued in May 2007 alleging professional negligence, and later added a claim that the home misrepresented the cause of the broken hips and falsified records, arguing that this fraud tolled the limitation period.

The Court of Appeals affirmed partial summary judgment barring claims based on acts before May 22, 2005, two years before the suit. Quoting an earlier decision, the court explained that even where there is evidence of fraud, the limitation period “is not tolled when the plaintiff knew all facts necessary to show malpractice before the running of the period of limitation.” Dove had observed the injuries during frequent visits, complained to the staff and never believed the nurses’ explanations for the falls. Claims based on later acts remained.

30. Arbor Management Services v. Hendrix (2022)

Arbor Management Services, LLC v. Hendrix, No. A22A0068, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 22, 2022

Catherine Hendrix, a resident of Arbor Terrace at Cascade, a senior-citizen residential facility allegedly managed by Arbor Management Services, died of COVID-19 on April 6, 2020. The plaintiffs alleged that the facility did not enforce its own restriction on outside visitation, did not ensure that staff wore masks or other protective equipment, let asymptomatic staff who had been exposed to the virus keep working, and on March 17 held a St. Patrick’s Day gathering and a scenic bus ride without social distancing.

The federal PREP Act did not bar the state-law claims, but the Georgia COVID-19 Pandemic Business Safety Act did, the Court of Appeals held in reversing the denial of the motion to dismiss. That statute bars damages on a COVID-19 liability claim against a healthcare facility, healthcare provider, entity or individual, a group the court noted includes nursing homes and assisted living facilities, unless the claimant proves “gross negligence, willful and wanton misconduct, reckless infliction of harm, or intentional infliction of harm.” The conduct alleged showed “a belatedness or lack of urgency” in the facility’s response, the court held, but not gross negligence. The General Assembly enacted the Act in August 2020, after the events in the case. The court noted that a question about retroactive application of the state-law immunities had not been raised and ruled upon in the trial court and so was not before it.

How These Decisions Were Selected and Checked

Each summary was written from the text of the opinion itself rather than from secondary descriptions. Citations use the Georgia Reports or Georgia Appeals Reports where the reporter citation was available; more recent Court of Appeals decisions are cited by docket number and decision date. The summaries cover the issues discussed here and not every issue in each appeal. Statutory language is quoted as the court quoted it in the year of the decision. Research for this page was completed in September 2026.

Statute Cited

Senate Bill 68 (2025), as passed, Georgia General Assembly

About This Page

This page summarizes published appellate decisions for general information. It is not legal advice and does not describe how the law applies to any particular claim. Court decisions can be limited, distinguished or overruled, and statutes change; the outcome of a case depends on its facts and on the version of the law that applies to it.