The Role of Institutional Liability in Residential Treatment Center Lawsuits
Regardless of whether a person resides in the community or in a treatment center, they retain their right to safety, dignity, and freedom from abuse. Any mental health facility, juvenile detention center, or treatment center that works with vulnerable individuals must safeguard these rights through proper oversight and training.
Reports raising concerns about safety at residential treatment centers, such as Evolve Treatment Centers in California, have led to personal injury lawsuits hinging upon a key legal theory: institutional liability. This article will explain the enhanced responsibilities of these facilities and how survivors can pursue justice.
Duty of Care
Duty of care refers to an individual or organization’s responsibility to prevent harm to others. To establish a duty of care, the plaintiff must have had some sort of relationship with the defendant, such as receiving treatment from the facility.
Institutions that work with vulnerable people have a higher duty of care than the average individual or private businesses. Some of these duties include conducting background checks on workers, reporting any nonconsensual activities to the proper authorities, and maintaining adequate supervision of all residents and staff.
The institution can be considered vicariously liable for any inappropriate behavior by employees that was enabled by the employee’s relationship with the facility.
For example, if a staff member were to inappropriately touch a patient at a residential treatment center, this would make the institution liable. The staff member would not have had access to the patient if they did not work at the center, and the abuse occurred on facility grounds.
Systemic Failures and Liability
Institutional liability often arises from systemic failures, meaning inadequate or faulty protocols and procedures. Some of the most common ones include the following.
Negligent Policies and Procedures: A treatment center should have clear policies around potential abuse and train its staff to follow specific procedures. This could include conducting regular checks on patients, processing complaints in a timely manner, and performing intake assessments to identify high-risk patients.
Negligent Hiring: Any treatment center that works with children, disabled individuals, or the elderly must conduct thorough background checks to ensure they don’t hire anyone with a history of violence.
Negligent Training: Trainees must be informed of the proper reporting procedures for potential misconduct and trained in how to respectfully interact with patients at a residential treatment center.
Negligent Supervision: If a staff member mistreats a patient at a facility, it would constitute negligent supervision. A supervisor should have identified the misconduct, intervened on behalf of the patient, reported the issue to the appropriate authorities, and separated the parties until a full investigation could be conducted.
Potentially Liable Parties
While a criminal case focuses on the direct perpetrator, civil cases typically focus on the institution. This is because residential treatment centers and other organizations have insurance policies that will cover claims, while individuals may not be able to compensate the victim.
The individual perpetrator, their supervisor, and administrations can be liable. Property owners and management companies may also be incorporated into a lawsuit.
Potential Legal Avenues for Compensation
Survivors of institutional abuse have several legal avenues to pursue. In many cases, the claim will start with an insurance demand letter, then move to a civil lawsuit if insurance negotiations fail. If there are numerous cases all directed at the same party, there may be a mass tort claim.
Insurance Claim
This is a negotiation between the victim and the liable institution and is usually the first step toward receiving compensation. An attorney will file a demand letter outlining the types of damages sought, and the institution’s insurance company will return with a counteroffer.
This process continues until the victim is satisfied, and then all parties sign an agreement. The settlement agreement typically releases the institution from any further litigation about the specific case.
Civil Lawsuit
Some cases may proceed to a civil lawsuit if there are complex legal questions, such as if the abuse occurred before extended statutes of limitations or if the treatment center was purchased by another entity after the assault occurred.
An attorney will file a complaint with the appropriate court, then share information with the other parties, called discovery. A judge will encourage all parties to reach an agreement before the trial date, but if that fails, each party will present its evidence and arguments to a judge and jury.
Mass Torts
While mass torts are often confused with class action lawsuits, the two are different. Mass torts are individual cases that share the same legal premises or involve the same defendants. Courts combine them in multidistrict legislation for certain facets of the claims.
For example, the entire discovery process for all cases may be conducted simultaneously in a single jurisdiction. Once this process is complete, the cases are returned to their separate jurisdictions and tried independently.
Institutional Lawsuits Face Additional Challenges
A specialized attorney is a key resource for lawsuits against institutions, like residential treatment facilities. The institution will raise a strong defense and may resort to tactics like spurious motions, hoping to force the victim to drop the lawsuit.
Attorneys preserve the victim’s legal rights, protect them from intimidation, and manage third-party communications to ensure survivors can focus on healing. As such, they play a crucial role in getting justice for institutional sexual abuse, whether that is at a treatment center or in a detention center.
