The son of a longtime Boca Raton nursing home resident has filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that years of neglected skin care, unmonitored falls, and an untreated hip fracture ended his mother’s life. The complaint, filed September 4, 2026, in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, describes a bedbound woman who was identified as a high fall risk, left without bed-safety devices, and then left in bed for 27 days with a broken hip before she died.
The two harms described in this complaint are not separate stories. They are the same story told twice.
A resident who is bedbound, oxygen-dependent, and unable to transfer without help is, by definition, a resident who cannot relieve pressure on her own skin and cannot catch herself at the edge of a bed. Both risks are identified by the same assessments, and both are answered by the same thing: staff who are present often enough to reposition her, check her skin, and respond when she needs help. When that presence is missing, pressure wounds and unwitnessed falls tend to appear together in the same chart.
The locations alleged in this complaint are telling. Wounds on the feet, heels, calves, and lower back are the classic pattern for someone lying in one position for extended periods. Heels have almost no natural padding and are among the first sites to break down when a resident is not offloaded. The sacrum and lower back bear body weight whenever a resident lies on her back. These are not obscure sites; they are the areas any routine skin check is supposed to cover.
The 27 days after the fracture are the part families find hardest to hear. A hip fracture that cannot be surgically repaired does not end the facility’s obligations. It raises them. A resident who cannot be repositioned comfortably because of an unrepaired fracture is at extreme risk of new pressure injuries, and the pain management, skin care, and monitoring required in that period are more intensive, not less.
Florida law reflects this. Chapter 400 sets out resident rights and care standards for nursing homes in the state, and federal regulation separately requires that residents who enter a facility without pressure sores do not develop them unless the wounds were clinically unavoidable. Whether that standard was met here is what the litigation will decide.
Cases like this one usually turn on what the record does and does not contain. A family who is told there was no incident report after a fall, or who learns about wounds only when the skin is already open, is rarely being told the whole story by the chart alone. Fall risk assessments, care plans, repositioning logs, skin assessments, wound measurements, and staffing records for the relevant shifts are all discoverable, and read together they show whether the care that was planned was the care that was delivered.
Families often tell us they assumed a fall or a bedsore was simply what happens to someone that frail. Frailty raises risk. It does not excuse a facility from responding to it. If your loved one developed pressure wounds, fell without explanation, or declined sharply after an injury in a nursing home, you are entitled to see the records and to understand what they show.
Call Bedsore.Law at 844-407-6737 or reach us at bedsore.law/contact for a free review.
Boca Post: Family Sues Boca Raton Nursing Home, Alleging Neglect Led to Resident’s Death
