Bedsores at a Virginia Assisted Living Facility: A New Ruling Upholds a Family's Wrongful Death Verdict

Families often choose an assisted living facility because it feels like a home rather than a hospital. That difference is real. But it does not mean the facility is off the hook when a resident's preventable injury turns deadly.

On October 6, 2026, the Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld a jury verdict holding one such facility responsible. In Vista Park Memory Care Center, LLC v. Clark, Record No. 0013-25-2 (Va. Ct. App. Oct. 6, 2026), a family sued the Richmond assisted living facility where their father developed a pressure ulcer (a bedsore) that became infected and led to his death. The jury found the facility responsible. The appeals court affirmed on every issue the facility raised.

What happened to Mr. Clark

James Clark was an elderly man with progressive dementia who moved into Vista Park Memory Care Center in 2014. By the summer of 2015, painful contractures in his knees and his dementia left him unable to reposition himself in bed, and he was incontinent. In late July 2015 he developed a stage II pressure ulcer on his left hip.

His doctor ordered outside wound care and told the facility he needed frequent position changes. Visiting nurses told the staff to turn him every one to two hours and put signs in his room as reminders. The evidence at trial, viewed in the family's favor as the appeals court was required to view it, showed what happened instead:

• The facility's chart for Mr. Clark showed only two references to repositioning between July 1 and October 29, 2015.
• Records did not show that staff gave him the protein supplement his doctor ordered, or that he was weighed between April and October 2015.
• Visiting nurses frequently found him soiled, with dressings saturated or missing entirely.
• The facility's only licensed nurse was fired in August 2015 and was not replaced with a nurse, leaving no nurse on staff. Its aides were not allowed to apply the medicated dressings the wound needed.
• The facility did not report the worsening wound to the Virginia Department of Social Services, as state regulations require for wounds above stage I.

By late September, according to the family's expert, the wound had likely reached stage IV, meaning it had eroded into muscle, tendon or bone. On October 29, his daughter found him burning with fever during one of her regular weekend visits and had him taken to the hospital. He was screaming in pain. The wound had formed an abscess that had to be surgically drained, and bacteria were found in his bloodstream. He died on December 31, 2015, of sepsis caused by the infected wound.

After a five-day trial in 2024, the jury awarded $7.6 million. Because the family's complaint had asked for $6 million, the trial court reduced the compensatory award to that amount.

What the Court of Appeals decided

The facility raised three main arguments on appeal. All three failed.

1. The facility's failures could be considered together. The facility argued that the family never proved its failure to report the wound to state regulators, or its lack of nurses, independently caused Mr. Clark's death. The court rejected that framing. The family's case was general negligence: the facility did not do enough to care for him. The family's expert testified that pressure ulcers, when treated aggressively, will heal, and that the brief daily visits from outside nurses did little good when Mr. Clark spent the other 23 hours without proper care. On the reporting failure, the court said "the jury was free to view this as additional evidence of negligent care." On staffing, the court held that the evidence "allowed the jury to reasonably infer that additional nurses providing adequate care would have allowed Mr. Clark's pressure ulcers to heal and prevented them from becoming septic."

2. The trial judge properly allowed evidence about the fired nurse. The court held that testimony about why the facility's clinical director was fired, and her troubled relationship with the aides she supervised, was relevant to the family's theory that communication at the facility had broken down.

3. Grandchildren could recover even without testifying. Two of Mr. Clark's grandsons, whose father had died before him, were awarded damages. Neither testified. The facility argued there was no evidence of their grief, especially as to one grandson about whom almost nothing was said. The court disagreed, relying on a 1967 decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia holding that a jury may infer that the death of a close family member brought sorrow and mental anguish even without direct proof. As to that grandson, "the jury could infer that Nicholas, as a result of his grandfather's death, experienced sorrow, mental anguish, or loss of solace."

The opinion is unpublished, so it is not binding precedent for other Virginia courts. But it applies settled law, and it is a clear example of how these cases are proven and how appellate courts review them.

What this means for Virginia families

"Assisted living" is not a shield. Assisted living facilities in Virginia provide housing and help with daily activities like bathing and toileting, not medical care, but they must still follow state regulations, including rules on reporting wounds and staffing to meet residents' needs. When a resident cannot turn themselves and a doctor has ordered repositioning, the facility's staff are the ones in the room. A facility that leaves a vulnerable resident unturned and soiled can be held responsible for what follows, even when outside nurses and doctors are also involved.

Bedsores are evidence. The family's expert put it simply: a pressure ulcer that keeps getting worse is a sign of deficient care. A wound that progresses from stage II to stage IV over a few months, in a facility with orders to prevent exactly that, is the kind of record that can carry a case to a jury. Facility charts matter too, including what they do not show. Here, two repositioning entries in four months spoke for themselves.

A regulatory violation does not have to be the whole case. Families do not have to prove that one rule violation, standing alone, caused the death. Missed reports, missing staff and missed care can together show a facility that was not acting reasonably.

Grandchildren can be part of the family's recovery. Virginia's wrongful death statute lets the jury award damages for "sorrow, mental anguish, and solace," among other losses. Va. Code § 8.01-52. Those damages go first to the surviving spouse, the children, and the children of any child who died before the decedent. Va. Code § 8.01-53. That rule is broader than Maryland's, as the table below shows.

The deadline is short. A Virginia wrongful death action generally must be brought by the personal representative within two years after the death. Va. Code § 8.01-244.

Who can recover for a wrongful death: Virginia, Maryland and D.C.

	Virginia	Maryland	District of Columbia
Who the claim benefits first	Surviving spouse, children, and children of any child who died first (Va. Code § 8.01-53)	Spouse, parents and children (Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 3-904(a))	The spouse or domestic partner and the next of kin (D.C. Code § 16-2701)
Can grandchildren recover when their parent died first?	Yes, in the first class of beneficiaries	Only if there is no spouse, parent or child, and only if the grandchild was substantially dependent on the deceased (§ 3-904(b))	Depends on who qualifies as next of kin in the particular family
Deadline to file	2 years after death (§ 8.01-244)	Generally 3 years after death (§ 3-904(g))	2 years after death (D.C. Code § 16-2702)

Maryland's statute is available here, and the D.C. statutes here and here. For more on how Maryland's beneficiary rules work in practice, see our post on Maryland wrongful death claims.

Talk to us

If a parent or grandparent was seriously hurt or died after developing bedsores, infections or other preventable injuries in a nursing home or assisted living facility in Virginia, Maryland or D.C., we can help you understand whether the facility can be held responsible. Learn more about our nursing home neglect and wrongful death practice, call Posey Lebowitz at (202) 524-0123, or use our contact form for a free consultation.

This is general information, not legal advice about your case.