Family of woman who froze outside Bondurant nursing home sue for wrongful death
The family of a woman who froze to death two years ago are suing the senior care center where she lived for failing to prevent her death.
Lynne Stewart, 77, lived in the dementia care wing of Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing in Bondurant prior to Jan. 21, 2022, when workers found her unconscious outside a locked door in freezing conditions. Suffering severe hypothermia, she was rushed to a hospital, where she died.
Subsequent investigations found Stewart had exited the building about 9:30 the previous night, but her absence was not noticed for more than eight hours despite multiple alarm systems meant to detect wandering residents. State inspectors cited the facility for numerous breaches of safety regulations, resulting in a $10,000 fine.
The worker in charge of the memory care unit the night Stewart died, who was supposed to check on her every hour, was charged with murder and later pleaded guilty to dependent abuse. Another worker, who was responsible for the facility's assisted living unit that night, was later fired but has filed a lawsuit alleging that she did nothing wrong and that the company has scapegoated Black employees for the negligence of white workers and managers.
The new lawsuit, filed Monday, is by the estates of Stewart and her daughter Sara Gwinn, who died in November 2023. The complaint accuses Courtyard Estates and Jaybird Senior Living of gross negligence and failure to train employees leading to Stewart's wrongful death.
Attorneys for the estates did not immediately return messages seeking comment. The facility does not yet have an attorney listed to represent it.
Why did resident's departure go unnoticed?
The new complaint echoes many of the problems raised by earlier reports.
Hawthorne Crossing had alarms on its exterior exits as well as door alarms on individual rooms in the memory care wing. But the alarms were prone to false alerts — the one on Stewart's door was secured only with double-sided tape, according to the lawsuit — and the iPads workers were supposed to carry struggled to retain charge and often did not show alerts for the alarms as they were supposed to. Stewart's absence was only noted when Sally Daniels, who was responsible for the assisted living wing that night, entered the main office and saw a notification on the computer there.
Previously: 2 Iowa care-facility residents freeze to death: One worker faces a murder charge; another doesn't
The unreliable alarms and inadequate technology were well known to management before Stewart's death, according to the complaint. Staff also knew that Stewart had a history of trying to leave the facility.
Despite this, the complaint says, managers failed to fix the issues, or ensure Catherine Forkpa, the night shift worker on the memory care unit, had sufficient training. Some managers are also accused of more direct culpability, as both the executive director and on-call nurse failed to respond to numerous phone alerts they received overnight about the triggered alarms.
"Defendants consciously disregarded substantial and unjustifiable risks of injury and death of Lynne Stewart," the lawsuit claims.
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Courtyard Estates sued after dementia patient dies of exposure
