One of Louisiana’s most powerful legislators and his colleague are co-owners of a nursing home that faces a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of a former resident.
The case against their facility is playing out as both lawmakers and the rest of the Louisiana Legislature consider controversial legislation to undercut similar legal challenges, but the lawmakers say the bill has nothing to do with their business.
Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, and Sen. Bob Hensgens, R-Abbeville, are part of a 10-person ownership group for the Acadia St. Landry Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Church Point. Hensgens is also the administrator of the nursing home. Two other members of his family are also part of the ownership group, according to state business records.
The children of Cynthia Stewart filed a lawsuit and medical malpractice claim against Hensgens and Henry’s nursing home in April 2024, less than two months after Stewart died at age 74. She had spent almost 15 months as a resident at Acadia St. Landry when she developed a severe bed sore at the base of her spine in November 2023, according to the lawsuit her family filed in Louisiana’s 8th Judicial District Court in Winn Parish.
Senate Bill 134 by Sen. Thomas Pressly, R-Shreveport, seeks to reduce the liability from wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits for dozens of Louisiana nursing homes – from potentially millions of dollars per institution to just $100,000. The Senate passed the legislation on a 26-11 vote Wednesday, with Henry and Hensgens voting in favor.
The two senators say the bill wouldn’t affect Acadia St. Landry because it has a different organizational structure than the facilities the legislation is meant to shield.
“We don’t have a management company, and that bill is exclusive for management companies,” Hensgens said Tuesday in an interview.
“There is no management company associated with Acadia St. Landry,” Henry said Tuesday in response to a question about the legislation. “The bill deals with management companies.”
While Hensgens and Henry say the legislation won’t protect their business, nursing home lobbyists suggested in public testimony last week that the attorneys who filed the lawsuit against Acadia St. Landry are targets of the bill.
Garcia & Artigliere describes itself as a “nursing home neglect and abuse” law firm with offices in California, Arizona, Kentucky and Louisiana. It has 66 lawsuits pending against facilities in Louisiana, including Acadia St. Landry.
The Louisiana Nursing Home Association claims the litigation threatens to put their industry out of business.
“We’re going to have those health care facilities turning in their keys because they can’t do business in this state anymore” if these lawsuits continue, Wes Hataway, policy director for the nursing home association, said at a legislative hearing last week.
Also pushing the bill to protect nursing homes is Teddy Ray Price, part of the Acadia St. Landry ownership group with Henry and Hensgens.
Price, who is also president of the Louisiana Nursing Home Association, and his family own two dozen nursing homes in Louisiana and a nursing home management company. Garcia & Artigliere has sued five of his facilities and Central Management Co., the nursing home management business he owns.
Price could not be reached at his office or on his personal cellphone this week.
‘You got to turn your mother’
According to the lawsuit, Stewart’s wound was only discovered when she was transferred from Acadia St. Landry to Maison de Lafayette Nursing Home. But by that time, it had grown so severe that her bone was exposed and she had contracted sepsis. She then had to be immediately moved to a hospital for treatment, according to the lawsuit.
The family alleges the wound developed because Acadia St. Landry failed to provide proper medical supervision to Stewart while she was a resident. Her survivors claim Central Management Co. intentionally understaffed the nursing home to turn a higher profit.
Acadia St. Landry ranks poorly, with only one out of five stars, on the widely accepted rating scale the federal Medicare program uses. A one-star rating describes a “much below average” facility, according to the Medicare website. The ratings are calculated based on the results of health inspections, staffing and other quality control measures government inspectors conduct.
Registered nurses at Acadia St. Landry spent an average of nine minutes with each patient per day, compared with the national average of 40 minutes and a Louisiana average of 18 minutes, according to the federal data.
The facility’s patient time with licensed professional nurses and licensed vocational nurses – who require less training and are paid far less than registered nurses – was higher than the national and state averages.
Geoffrey Stewart, Cynthia Stewart’s son, expanded on accusations in the lawsuit at a legislative committee hearing last week, though he didn’t identify the nursing home by name. He also didn’t mention that lawmakers own the facility.
“The question that I have for you is: How difficult is it to turn a patient every two hours? Apparently, it’s really hard,” Stewart told legislators. “So hard that whenever I visited, I had to go search for employees to come and turn my mother. I had to bring cash with me every time I went to give money to [staff members to] come and turn my mother.”
“I was there. I went to that place. I visited her, knowing the fear that she was in. I went,” Stewart said. “But the message here tonight is, you can’t just go. You got to pull back sheets. You got to turn your mother.”
Henry declined to respond to the specifics of the Stewart case because of the pending litigation but said Acadia St. Landry meets state and federal staffing requirements.
Lawsuit and legislation limits
Henry and Hensgens also insist that even though Price’s Central Management Co. is named in the Stewart lawsuit, it is not working with or for Acadia St. Landry.
The distinction over whether Central Management Co. or another management company has a hand in operations in Acadia St. Landry could be essential to the outcome of the lawsuit they face.
Nursing homes are, in general, protected from large jury awards by Louisiana’s medical malpractice act, which caps damages against health care providers for unintentional injury at $500,000.
Of that $500,000, a nursing home found to be negligent pays no more than $100,000. The rest of the money comes from a state pool fund that several types of health care providers contribute to for covering such claims.
Over the past year, Garcia & Artigliere has circumvented that cap by arguing that nursing home management companies like Central Management aren’t health care providers and shouldn’t be subjected to the medical malpractice law. Instead, they should be considered administrators that can be held responsible for larger jury awards.
Garcia & Artigliere have been successful in two such cases against Louisiana nursing homes so far. Its clients have received a $3.5 million verdict against Chateau St. James Rehab and Retirement in Lutcher and $2.1 million from Heritage Manor West in Shreveport.
The purpose of Senate Bill 134 is to shut down this legal route to larger awards. Hattaway, with Louisiana Nursing Home Association, and others argue the state’s medical malpractice act was always meant to cover these types of negligence cases. The legislation would bring management companies for health care providers, including nursing homes and hospitals, under that legal cap.
But if Acadia St. Landry is not using a management company, Hensgens said the medical malpractice law applies to their lawsuit whether the Pressly bill passes or not.
Big politics
Louisiana nursing home owners, some of the largest donors to candidates for the legislature and governor every election cycle, are the main supporters of the legislation. Price attended last week’s hearing on Pressly’s bill in person but didn’t speak publicly.
One of the few people who did testify in favor of the proposal was Troy Broussard, an attorney representing Hensgens, Henry, Price and other owners of Acadia St. Landry.
Matt Coman, a New Orleans-based attorney with Garcia & Artigliere who represents the Stewart family, provided testimony in opposition to the legislation.
AARP Louisiana, the state’s largest advocacy organization for seniors, also opposes the bill, saying it would put more elderly people at risk for abuse.
“We’ve always maintained that our legislators should put their constituents ahead of any financial interests related to the outcome of the bill,” Andrew Muhl, AARP’s state director of advocacy, said in a statement this week.
“If the supporters of this bill are successful, it means there will be a complete lack of due process for abuse and neglect due to perpetually poor and unsafe levels of basic care for our most vulnerable seniors,” Muhl said.
The committee sided overwhelmingly with the nursing home industry. Hensgens, as a committee member, voted with the 6-1 majority to move the legislation to the Senate floor.
Neither Hensgens nor Henry had been part of a nursing home ownership group until 2022, when they bought Acadia St. Landry with Price and others. At the time, Henry was not in legislative leadership. Hensgens, who has worked in the nursing home industry for three decades, said he and his brother were responsible for putting together the buyers’ group.
“My younger brother ran it for about 15 years for previous owners, and the gentleman got to be 85 years old. No one in the family wanted it, so he came to us and said, ‘Would you like to buy it?’” Hensgens said. “And we put together the investment group so we could afford it.”
Nursing homes in Louisiana aren’t sold frequently, and there is state prohibition on any new homes opening.