Leonard Legal Group takes down “Care-None”!
On November 18, 2025, a Morris County, New Jersey jury returned a $5.5 million verdict in favor of the family of Robert Hayes, finding that Care One at Morris (now known as Care One at Parsippany) had failed to provide the care and dignity that Mr. Hayes was owed. The trial, which lasted three weeks in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Morristown, revealed that Hayes—admitted to the facility in October 2017 after treatment for congestive heart failure and assessed as a “fall risk”—was subjected to a dramatic decline in care that culminated in a deadly embolic stroke.
During his stay, Hayes developed breathing problems, swelling and confusion. He was also found wandering the halls of the home, injured in a fall that caused a head injury—yet staff never informed his physician, never conducted a follow-up assessment, and failed to recognize changes in his condition. When his sister demanded a transfer due to “lack of care,” the next day the family found him slumped over in bed and unresponsive. Despite what appeared to be serious medical distress, the facility denied it was a stroke and only later did hospital staff diagnose a severe embolic stroke that very likely could have been treated more promptly. Hayes died on October 28, 2017.
Representing the Hayes family were Leonard Legal Group attorneys Scott G. Leonard and Jennifer Pawlak; they argued that the nursing home’s many lapses—failure to assess, document and treat basic medical emergencies, failure to alert a physician, and failure to act on fall-related injuries—violated the New Jersey Nursing Home Residents' Rights Act and amounted to negligent neglect. The jury agreed, finding the facility’s negligence directly contributed to Hayes’ tragic death.
In the courtroom, the roughly three-week trial unfolded like a portrait of chronic neglect: staff records silent, care plans ignored, distress unheeded. For Hayes’s family, the verdict was more than a civil award — it was a public affirmation that the dignity of nursing-home residents must be safeguarded, and that when a vulnerable individual’s trust is betrayed, justice can prevail.
You’re in Good Hands with Brusca and Cohen! Not so much with Harbor View…
On a spring day in 2014, after a grueling seven-week trial in Hudson County, a New Jersey jury returned a verdict of $13.2 million in favor of the family of 87-year-old Mary Dwyer — a woman who had entered the short-term rehabilitation facility Alaris Health at Harbor View Health Care Center in Jersey City, only to emerge gravely harmed and ultimately dead. The jury found that during Dwyer’s roughly three-month stay she suffered “massive” Stage IV pressure ulcers, lost 20 pounds, endured multiple debridements, bone-shavings, and even a colostomy — all needless and preventable injuries according to her lawyers.
The plaintiff team — led by trial attorneys Michael A. Brusca and David R. Cohen — painted a stark portrait of a facility under-staffed and indifferent. They produced evidence that aides were too few to reposition residents properly; that Dwyer’s care charts had been falsified — showing baths, feedings, and turns on days when she was not even present; and that staff routinely neglected basic nursing duties.
In their closing arguments, Brusca and Cohen told the jury that with adequate staffing and appropriate care, Dwyer would likely have healed from her shoulder injury and returned home — instead she died “an undignified death in pain.” The jury believed them. They awarded $5 million in compensatory damages and $8.213 million in punitive damages, holding the nursing home’s neglect to be a reckless disregard for patient safety.
The defense — the corporate owners and staff of Harbor View, along with their insurers — maintained that Dwyer’s deterioration was the result of her preexisting conditions and not neglect. They called the allegations “false, erroneous and a gross miscarriage of justice.”
In that courtroom, the Dwyer family’s legal team stood as guardians of dignity and accountability. Through expert testimony, meticulous record-analysis, and unflinching demands for justice, they forced a verdict that reverberated as a stark warning across New Jersey’s long-term care industry: vulnerable residents deserve more than indifference — and when a system fails them, justice can still prevail.