Los Angeles Elder Abuse and Nursing Home Neglect Lawyer

Short answer: this page is about physical abuse, neglect and injury claims for elderly and dependent adults in Los Angeles County nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living and board and care homes, and about wrongful death when neglect kills a resident. It is not about estate planning, conservatorships or guardianship. California has a special statute for these cases, the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act, and when a family proves that a facility was reckless rather than merely careless, that statute gives the family remedies an ordinary negligence case does not, including the resident’s own pain and suffering after death and an award of attorney fees. Abdi & Associates, Inc. helps individuals with elder abuse and nursing home neglect claims throughout California, and the first thing we do is find out whether the facility is already destroying or rewriting the record. Free, confidential consultation. Call 24/7, English and Spanish: (888) 772-2529. No attorney fee unless there is a recovery. (Financial elder abuse, meaning money, property, deeds or accounts taken from an elder, is a separate claim under a different section of the same Act, and we are glad to discuss it on the same call.)

Do you have a case? Signs that you should call

You do not need to prove anything before you call. If one of these describes your parent, spouse or family member, the situation is worth a free review:

• A stage 3 or stage 4 pressure ulcer, or any bedsore that goes to muscle or bone. Advanced pressure ulcers in a facility that was supposed to turn, reposition and assess the resident are the most common serious neglect case in California.
• An unexplained fracture or bruising. A hip, arm, rib or facial fracture that nobody witnessed, or bruising in a pattern that does not match a fall, calls for an outside look at the chart.
• Repeated falls. One fall can happen to anyone. A second and third fall after a facility has assessed the resident as a fall risk is a care plan that was written and then not followed.
• Rapid weight loss, malnutrition or dehydration. A resident who is losing weight, has sunken eyes and dry mouth, or is admitted to the hospital with acute kidney injury from dehydration, was very likely not being fed or given fluids as the care plan required.
• Wandering or elopement. A resident with dementia who gets out of the building, or is found in a stairwell, a parking lot or another resident’s room, was not supervised at the level the facility promised.
• Sudden over sedation. A parent who was alert last month and is now slumped, unresponsive or newly on antipsychotic medication may be receiving drugs for the convenience of the staff rather than for a diagnosis.
• Staff who will not explain an injury. Shifting stories, a missing incident report, a refusal to say who was on duty, or pressure to move the resident out are all reasons to get the records now.
• A facility with recent citations. California posts inspection results, deficiencies and citations for licensed facilities, and a pattern of the same deficiency is powerful evidence that the harm was not an accident.

If any of that sounds like your family member, call (888) 772-2529. The call is free, confidential and answered 24 hours a day, in English or Spanish.

What to do now

1. Get the resident seen by a doctor who does not work for the facility. An emergency department or an outside physician will describe the wound, the fracture or the dehydration in language the facility did not write. If the resident is in danger, call 911 first.
2. Photograph everything, with dates. Wounds, bruises, the bed and mattress, the call light, the room, any soiled linens, and the resident’s general condition. Photograph the same wound again a week later. Phone photos carry the date and time in the file.
3. Request the complete chart in writing. Ask for the entire medical record, not a summary. Put the request in writing, keep a copy, and note the date you delivered it.
4. Report it. Every long term care facility in California is under the eye of the Long Term Care Ombudsman and the licensing agency. Reporting creates an independent record made by someone other than the facility. See the reporting section below.
5. Do not sign anything the facility puts in front of you. That includes a new admission packet, an arbitration agreement, a transfer or discharge form, a settlement or waiver, or a release of liability. Nothing needs to be signed today.
6. Call a lawyer before the record settles. Charts get amended, staffing sheets get archived, and employees leave. Call (888) 772-2529, 24/7, for a free consultation.

Where to report elder abuse or neglect in California

• The California Long Term Care Ombudsman. The statewide hotline for residents of nursing homes and assisted living, 1-800-231-4024, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to take calls and refer complaints (California Department of Aging).
• The California Department of Public Health. CDPH licenses and inspects skilled nursing facilities and investigates complaints against them. A complaint alleging a threat of imminent danger, death or serious bodily harm must be investigated and completed within 90 days, and other long term care complaints within 60 days (CDPH, File a Complaint).
• Adult Protective Services. The statewide APS number, 1-833-401-0832, connects you to your county’s APS by zip code, seven days a week, 24 hours a day (California Department of Social Services). APS handles abuse of elders and dependent adults in the community as well as in facilities.

The staff themselves are required to report. Under Welfare and Institutions Code section 15630, anyone with full or intermittent responsibility for the care or custody of an elder or dependent adult, including facility administrators, staff and health practitioners, must report known or reasonably suspected abuse or neglect immediately or as soon as practicably possible, with a written report to follow within two working days. When a serious injury was never reported, that failure is itself part of the story.

Reporting is not the same as making a claim, and a report does not start or stop any legal deadline. It does create a contemporaneous record that a facility cannot rewrite.

The Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act

California’s elder abuse statute is the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act, Welfare and Institutions Code section 15600 and following. It is a civil statute. It exists alongside ordinary negligence law and gives certain victims stronger remedies.

Who is protected

An elder is any person residing in California who is 65 years of age or older (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 15610.27). A dependent adult is a person between 18 and 64 who lives in California and has physical or mental limitations that restrict the ability to carry out normal activities or to protect his or her rights, including people with physical or developmental disabilities; the definition also expressly includes any person between 18 and 64 who is admitted as an inpatient to a 24 hour health facility (§ 15610.23). A younger family member in a skilled nursing facility or a rehabilitation stay is therefore usually covered.

What counts as abuse and what counts as neglect

Abuse of an elder or dependent adult means physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, isolation, abduction or other treatment resulting in physical harm or pain or mental suffering; the deprivation by a care custodian of goods or services necessary to avoid physical harm or mental suffering; or financial abuse (§ 15610.07).

Neglect is defined in section 15610.57 as the negligent failure of a person having the care or custody of an elder or dependent adult to exercise the degree of care that a reasonable person in a like position would exercise. The statute then lists what neglect includes, and the list reads like a description of the cases families actually bring:

• Failure to assist in personal hygiene, or in the provision of food, clothing or shelter.
• Failure to provide medical care for physical and mental health needs.
• Failure to protect from health and safety hazards.
• Failure to prevent malnutrition or dehydration.

A pressure ulcer case is usually a hygiene, repositioning and medical care case. A wandering case is a health and safety hazard case. A weight loss case is a malnutrition and dehydration case. The statute has a category for each of them.

The enhanced remedies in section 15657, and why they matter more in 2026 than they used to

Proving neglect alone gets a family into ordinary damages. Section 15657 adds two remedies when the plaintiff proves, by clear and convincing evidence, that the defendant is liable for physical abuse, neglect or abandonment and that the defendant was guilty of recklessness, oppression, fraud or malice in committing it:

• The court must award the plaintiff reasonable attorney fees and costs (§ 15657, subd. (a)). In an ordinary negligence case each side pays its own lawyer.
• The limits that Code of Civil Procedure section 377.34 places on a deceased person’s damages do not apply (§ 15657, subd. (b)), so the family can recover what the resident personally suffered before death, subject to the cap that subdivision (b) borrows from Civil Code section 3333.2, subdivision (b).

That second remedy has become decisive. A temporary law let survival actions recover the decedent’s pain, suffering and disfigurement only if the case was granted trial preference before January 1, 2022, or was filed on or after January 1, 2022 and before January 1, 2026 (Code Civ. Proc., § 377.34, subd. (b)). That window has closed. In an ordinary survival case filed today, the decedent’s pain and suffering is no longer recoverable. Section 15657, subdivision (b), is an express exception to that rule, which means that in a nursing home death case the difference between an ordinary negligence theory and a proven elder abuse theory can be the difference between recovering the resident’s suffering and recovering nothing for it.

The cap that section 15657, subdivision (b), borrows is the noneconomic damages limit in Civil Code section 3333.2, subdivision (b). The Legislature set that limit at $350,000 for 2023 and raises it by $40,000 every January 1 until it reaches $750,000, which puts the 2026 figure at $470,000. Section 15657 also requires, in subdivision (c), that the standards for imposing punitive damages on an employer be met before these remedies are imposed on a corporate employer, which is why proving what management knew and what corporate staffing decisions caused is central to these cases.

One recent change is worth knowing. A 2025 amendment added section 15657.02, which allows a court to apply the lower preponderance of the evidence standard to these enhanced remedies, rather than clear and convincing evidence, in cases against certain long term care facilities where the court or arbitrator finds that the facility engaged in spoliation, meaning the intentional improper alteration of evidence or the intentional concealment or destruction of records that materially prejudices the other side. Facilities that alter charts now risk a lower burden of proof against them.

Skilled nursing residents have a separate right to sue for rights violations

Independent of the elder abuse statute, Health and Safety Code section 1430, subdivision (b), lets a current or former resident or patient of a skilled nursing or intermediate care facility, or that person’s legal representative, personal representative or successor in interest, sue the facility’s licensee for violating rights guaranteed to residents by state and federal law and regulation. For violations occurring on or after March 1, 2021, the licensee is liable for up to $500 for each violation, plus costs and attorney fees. The statute also provides that an agreement by a resident or patient to waive the right to sue under that subdivision is void as contrary to public policy. This claim is often paired with a neglect claim because it reaches rule violations, such as inadequate staffing or ignored call lights, that may not have caused a specific injury.

Financial elder abuse, in one sentence

If money, property, a deed, a bank account or a credit line was taken from an elder or dependent adult, that is financial abuse under a different part of the same Act, and section 15657.5 requires an award of attorney fees and costs to a plaintiff who proves it by a preponderance of the evidence; it is a different claim with a different deadline, and we are happy to talk it through on the same call.

Which law applies to your situation

Most nursing home cases are pleaded as more than one of these at the same time, and which one carries the case is often not clear until the chart and the staffing records are in hand. That is a reason to have the records reviewed rather than to guess.

If your family member is in a Los Angeles County facility and something is wrong, do not wait for the facility to explain it. Call (888) 772-2529 now, 24/7, English and Spanish, for a free and confidential case review. No attorney fee unless there is a recovery.

Deadlines

Two cautions. The six month government claim rule is the one that ends cases, and families frequently do not know that a county or district hospital operates the nursing unit. And section 340.5 can be shorter than two years, because it runs from discovery of the injury; when a case can be characterized either as neglect or as professional negligence, the shorter clock is the safe assumption. Deadlines have exceptions, and yours should be confirmed with an attorney rather than with a chart on a website.

The evidence, and why it has to be requested early

Nursing home cases are documentary cases. The facility writes the record, and the record is usually the best proof against it. The material that matters most:

• The complete medical chart, meaning nursing notes, physician orders, the medication administration record, treatment records, wound measurements and photographs, laboratory results, and hospital transfer records.
• MDS assessments. The federally required minimum data set assessments record the resident’s risk of pressure ulcers, falls, weight loss and cognitive decline. They frequently show that the facility identified the exact risk that later materialized.
• Care plans. The care plan says what the facility promised to do, how often to turn the resident, what fall interventions to use, what diet and fluids to give. Comparing the care plan against the flow sheets is how neglect is proved.
• Staffing records. Daily assignment sheets, punch records and posted staffing levels show whether there were enough people on the floor to do what the care plan required.
• Incident and investigation reports. Fall reports, injury of unknown origin reports, and the facility’s internal investigation.
• Photographs taken by the family, dated, over time.
• CDPH survey results and citations. Inspection findings, deficiencies and citations for the facility are public, and a repeated deficiency in the same area as your family member’s harm is evidence that the facility knew.

Charts are electronic, and electronic records carry audit trails showing who entered what and when it was changed. That is one reason to get counsel involved before a facility has months to tidy up, and, since the 2025 spoliation amendment, one reason a facility that alters records faces a lower burden of proof against it.

The arbitration agreement in the admission packet

Most California admission packets include an arbitration agreement. Families sign it in a stack of paperwork on the day a parent is admitted, often without being told what it does. California law regulates these agreements specifically. Under Health and Safety Code section 1599.81:

• Every admission contract containing an arbitration clause must clearly state that agreeing to arbitration is not a precondition for medical treatment or for admission to the facility.
• Arbitration clauses must be on a form separate from the rest of the admission contract, with space for the signature of an applicant who agrees to arbitrate.
• A clause about arbitrating medical malpractice claims must be clearly separated from other arbitration clauses, and each requires a separate signature.
• The arbitration attachment must give notice that under section 1430 the patient cannot waive the ability to sue for violation of the patient’s bill of rights.

An arbitration agreement is therefore not the end of a case. Whether it was signed at all, who signed it, whether that person had authority to sign for the resident, and whether the form complied with the statute are all real questions. Do not assume the case is closed because someone signed something at admission, and do not sign a new one now.

How Abdi & Associates can help

Abdi & Associates, Inc. helps individuals with elder abuse and nursing home neglect claims throughout California. We evaluate the claim, identify every responsible party and insurance policy, explain the deadlines, and handle the insurers so you can focus on treatment. Where a case calls for it, we work with experienced personal injury trial counsel we trust and stay involved in your case. We work remotely, by phone, video and secure electronic signature, in English and Spanish.

On the first call we will ask what happened, who the resident is, the name and city of the facility, when the injury or the death occurred, whether the resident is still in the facility, whether anything has been reported, and whether anyone has signed anything. From there the usual next steps are a written demand for the complete record, a preservation letter so that charts, audit trails, staffing sheets and video are not lost, a review of the facility’s public inspection history, and, where the resident is still in danger, help getting the report to the Ombudsman or CDPH the same day. If the neglect caused a permanent injury, the same file may involve a catastrophic injury damages analysis; if the resident died, it becomes a wrongful death case brought by the family alongside the survival claim. The consultation is free and confidential, and there is no attorney fee unless there is a recovery.

Frequently asked questions

Is a bedsore automatically a lawsuit?

No, but an advanced pressure ulcer that developed in a facility is one of the strongest neglect fact patterns in California, because facilities assess pressure ulcer risk on admission and write a repositioning and skin care plan. Where the chart shows the risk was identified and the plan was not followed, that is the failure to assist in personal hygiene and to provide medical care that California injury law and section 15610.57 describe. Pressure ulcers that arrive with the resident from a hospital, or that are unavoidable in a specific medical condition, are a different matter, and the chart usually settles which one it is.

What is the difference between neglect and medical malpractice in a nursing home?

Medical negligence is a health care provider performing professional services badly. Neglect under the elder abuse statute is a caretaker failing to provide the basic custodial care a person cannot provide for himself: food, water, hygiene, repositioning, supervision, and getting the resident to medical care. The distinction matters because the enhanced remedies in section 15657, including mandatory attorney fees, are available for neglect committed with recklessness, oppression, fraud or malice, and are not available for ordinary professional negligence, and because the deadlines are different.

My parent died. Can we still recover for what they suffered?

Sometimes, and the route matters. Since January 1, 2026, an ordinary survival action can no longer recover the decedent’s pain, suffering or disfigurement, because the temporary rule in Code of Civil Procedure section 377.34, subdivision (b), applied only to actions filed before that date. Welfare and Institutions Code section 15657, subdivision (b), removes that limitation when abuse or neglect committed with recklessness, oppression, fraud or malice is proven by clear and convincing evidence, subject to the Civil Code section 3333.2(b) cap. The family’s own losses are recovered separately in the wrongful death claim.

How long do I have to file an elder abuse case in California?

Generally two years from the injury, or two years from the date of death for a wrongful death claim (Code Civ. Proc., § 335.1). If the claim is characterized as professional negligence by a health care provider, it can be as short as one year from when the injury was discovered (§ 340.5). If a public entity operates the facility or hospital, a written government claim is due within six months (Gov. Code, § 911.2). Financial elder abuse has its own four year discovery period (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 15657.7).

We signed an arbitration agreement when Mom was admitted. Is the case over?

No. California requires an arbitration clause in a long term care admission contract to be on a separate form, to be separately signed, and to state clearly that agreeing to arbitrate is not a precondition of admission or treatment (Health & Saf. Code, § 1599.81). Whether the agreement was properly presented, and whether the person who signed had authority to bind the resident, are questions worth examining. The right to sue under Health and Safety Code section 1430(b) cannot be waived at all.

Does the elder abuse statute cover assisted living and board and care, or only nursing homes?

The Act covers abuse and neglect of any elder or dependent adult by a person who has care or custody of them, which includes assisted living and residential care facilities for the elderly, board and care homes, and in home caregivers, not only licensed skilled nursing facilities. What changes with the type of facility is the licensing agency and which additional claims are available. The Health and Safety Code section 1430(b) resident rights claim, for example, is specific to skilled nursing and intermediate care facilities.

My family member is under 65. Does the law still apply?

Yes, if the person is a dependent adult. That means an adult between 18 and 64 with physical or mental limitations that restrict the ability to carry out normal activities or to protect his or her rights, and it expressly includes any adult in that age range admitted as an inpatient to a 24 hour health facility (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 15610.23). Younger residents in skilled nursing, rehabilitation and long term care are frequently covered.

Who can bring the claim if the resident cannot?

A resident who is competent can sue in his or her own name. If the resident cannot, the claim is generally brought by a person with legal authority to act for them, such as an agent under a power of attorney, a conservator, or, after death, the personal representative or the successor in interest. Part of the first call is figuring out who that person is in your family, and no court appointment is needed before you call.

Will reporting to the Ombudsman or CDPH hurt our case?

No. An independent report creates a record made by someone other than the facility, which is usually helpful. Facilities are also legally prohibited from retaliating against residents who complain. Reporting is not a substitute for a claim, because a regulatory investigation does not compensate your family and does not stop any legal deadline from running.

Do you handle these cases outside Los Angeles?

Yes. Abdi & Associates helps families with elder abuse and nursing home neglect claims throughout California, with consultations by phone or video, in English and Spanish.

Related pages

• Personal injury claims in California
• Wrongful death claims
• Catastrophic injury cases in Los Angeles
• Falls and premises liability
• Traumatic brain injury
• Spinal cord injury
• Contact Abdi & Associates

Worried about a parent in a Los Angeles nursing home or assisted living facility? Call (888) 772-2529, 24/7, in English or Spanish, for a free and confidential consultation, or use the form below. No attorney fee unless there is a recovery.

Primary sources: Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code §§ 15600 et seq., 15610.07, 15610.23, 15610.27, 15610.57, 15630, 15657, 15657.02, 15657.5, 15657.7; Cal. Health & Saf. Code §§ 1430, 1599.81; Cal. Code Civ. Proc. §§ 335.1, 340.5, 377.34; Cal. Civ. Code § 3333.2; Cal. Gov. Code § 911.2; California Department of Aging, Long Term Care Ombudsman Program; California Department of Public Health, Licensing and Certification, File a Complaint; California Department of Social Services, Adult Protective Services.

Reviewed by Shawn Abdi, Esq., Abdi & Associates, Inc. Published: September 10, 2026. Attorney advertising. This page is general information, not legal advice about your specific situation. Legal deadlines have exceptions; confirm yours with an attorney. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.