Thread by @DivestSPD

Meet Charles Huber, current chair of the Seattle Police Foundation board.

Huber is a corporate lawyer with the Seattle-based firm Lane Powell who specializes in defending for-profit nursing homes against negligence suits

(THREAD)

(1/22)

Are you a nursing home with a long history of fines & health violations?

Are you being sued for:

-Abuse?
-Wrongful death?
-Retaliating against a whistleblower?

Call Lane Powell Now!

(2/22)

Credit where credit is due: The lawyers at Lane Powell are good at their jobs.

If they can, they’ll get clients off on a technicality. If not, they’ll use classic legal tactics designed to raise costs past the point where the plaintiffs can’t afford to continue. (3/22)

More often than not, companies that the firm represented have ended up facing massive federal penalties for the same or similar charges of wrongdoing that Lane Powell successfully defended them against in civil court.

(4/22)

Life Care Centers of America (LCCA), one of Lane Powell’s past clients, has been in the news lately. Two of its residential facilities—Kirkland and Richland—topped the list of hotspots for elder deaths during the COVID outbreak.

(5/22)

LCCA has paid out $2.3m in penalties for 57 different serious violations in various homes across the country since 2000. Additionally, it paid $145m to the federal government over false Medicare claims.

(6/22)

violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?paren…

Lane Powell successfully defended LCCA against a suit brought by the estate of Margarette Eckstein, a dementia patient who died while in care of its Kennewick facility.

(7/22)

According to court documents, Eckstein developed a sore on her sacrum (lower back) and the staff failed to adequately treat it over the course of nearly two months, allowing it to grow necrotic, increase in size and deteriorate to “Stage IV (bone exposed).

(8/22)

Furthermore, court documents show LCCA staff had allowed Ms. Eckstein to grow severely malnourished.

(9/22)

The facility failed to promptly notify Eckstein’s doctor of the changes in the size of the sore and other critical factors related to her health. And 3 days passed after the sore reached Stage IV status before she was admitted to the ER.

(10/22)

Eckstein was transferred to another nursing home where she was able to receive better care, but her condition had deteriorated so much that she died in August.

(11/22)

Despite the overwhelming evidence against their client, Lane Powell succeeded by asking the court to compel arbitration—a process that the plaintiff could not afford.

(12/22)

Huber represented Extendicare, another national nursing home chain with an eyebrow-raising record, in a class action suit. The case Steel v. Extendicare is listed near the top of his “representative cases” on his C.V.

(13/22)

Howard Steele brought a suit against Extendicare over the death of his daughter Lee Ann, who was hospitalized for a blockage in her tracheal tube less than 24 hrs after admission, causing her to suffer a brain injury that eventually led to her death.

(14/22)

Remarking on the case, a WA state health official said of Extendicare: “They're bad news. They are a very troubled corporation. It's just very sad that they are as bad as they are."

(15/22)

Like LCCA, Extendicare has facilities across North America and has paid out millions in lawsuits for everything from negligence and wrongful death to sexual harassment.
bmartin.cc/dissent/docume…

(16/22)

Nevertheless, Huber and Lane Powell got them off the hook this time. Steele et. al argued under Consumer Protection Act (CPA) that the company misled them about the standard of care, given their record. LP countered that the info abt their record was available online.

(17/22)

Ultimately, the judge sided with Extendicare's argument that there were no grounds under CPA, but noted that the “Court is concerned” about the quality of care issue and suggested plaintiffs bring a negligence claim

(18/22)

Just a few years later, the Department of Justice would bring the hammer down on Extendicare to the tune of $38 million. The company billed Medicare for care that was so poor that it was “effectively worthless” nytimes.com/2014/10/11/bus…

(19/22)

In addition to shielding companies that do systemic violence against the most vulnerable, Lane Powell has been at the frontlines of the campaign to starve the city of potential revenue badly needed to provide housing and services to its people.

(20/22)

The firm joined with the libertarian Freedom Foundation in a successful suit against Seattle’s 2017 wealth tax. The Olympia-based foundation is bankrolled by deep-pocket conservative donors like the Kochs, the DeVos family and Donor’s Trust.

(21/22)

freedomfoundation.com/press-release/…

Though they allied with conservatives in this instance, Lane Powell employees primarily give to Democratic candidates. The firm was among the top employers of people who gave to @MayorJenny last cycle

(22/22)

Thanks for reading!

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