An old lady had died in 2017, a week after being hospitalized for an unexplained double fracture of the femurs. The group must pay nearly 80,000 euros in damages to the son of the victim.
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For the first time since its creation, in 1989, the Orpea group is found guilty by the justice of “breaches” which led to a “trauma directly at the origin of the death” of a resident who resided in one of its retirement homes. The 2 e é> Civil Chamber of the Nanterre Judicial Court sentenced, Thursday, June 16, the world number one of accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people (EHPAD) private to pay 78,980 euros in damages To Eric Der Markarian, following a complaint filed after the death of his mother, Toussainte der Markarian, January 24, 2017.
At 84, the old lady died at Saint-Joseph Hospital in Paris, when she lived at the Ehpad Le Clos des Meuniers, in Bagneux (Hauts-de-Seine). After her transfer to the emergency room, an x -ray shows that she suffers from a fracture of the lower end of her two femurs. Its general bad health does not allow it to operate it. She dies a week after her hospitalization.
Insisting to know the causes and circumstances of his mother’s fractures, Mr. Der Markarian obtains, for several months, for the only response from Orpea that no particular fault had been committed by the establishment. In 2018, he decided to seize the judge in summary proceedings to obtain legal expertise. The expert’s report shows that fractures would be linked “to a fall during care or transfer” within the EHPAD. Mr. Der Markarian files a complaint in September 2019, against Orpea.
No clinical examination
During the court hearing on April 21, the company’s lawyer, Alexandre Malbasa, invoked the absence of “solid material evidence” to sweep the hypothesis of a fall. He expressed the possibility of an epilepsy crisis. The old lady, according to him, would hear herself to the point of fracturing her two legs in bed alone. No fault, which could therefore be criticized in Orpea.
In their deliberation rendered on Thursday, the judges do not grant any credit to the arguments of M e Malbasa. They claim that “the double fracture necessarily results from a fall”, as shown, they argue, the expert report and the observation of the hospital. They recall that a disabling generalized osteoarthritis and severe cognitive disorders made the old lady unable to move alone. Clearly, she could not fall without someone having witnessed.
The judgment notes, however, that his medical file “mentions no accident or pathological phenomenon before hospitalization”. The school coordinator did not practice clinical examination on M me der Markarian when she expressed high leg pain. This “constitutes a breach” of the establishment “to its follow -up obligations of dependent customers”.
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