The family of a woman who was mistakenly declared dead and placed in a body bag for two hours is suing a nursing home for the unthinkable blunder, court papers allege.
Janet Balducci had been at Water’s Edge Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Port Jefferson, Long Island when a nurse declared her dead on Feb. 4, 2022, sending her off in a body bag to be embalmed, according to a Suffolk County Supreme Court lawsuit.
But once the 82-year-old reached the Casimir Funeral Home in Miller Place, New York an employee opened the bag to discover she was “still breathing and had a pulse,” Balducci family lawyer Peter DeNoto told The Post.
The funeral home called emergency services which brought Balducci to the hospital where she “survived for another day but ultimately passed,” DeNoto explained.
Balducci’s sons, Robert and Joseph Balducci, are suing the nursing home and the funeral home for negligence and wrongful death and are hoping the lawsuit will help them get some answers about how such an error was allowed to happen DeNoto said.
“Did the nurse follow the criteria for determining whether somebody is dead and did a doctor confirm what the nurse found?” DeNoto said are some of the questions the family is seeking answers to.
“There really is no excuse for putting a live person in a body bag and sending them to a facility for embalming,” the lawyer said.
DeNoto said the case highlights a larger problem where the elderly are often neglected at long-term care facilities — even when they have loved ones who are highly involved with their care.
“There was nobody there advocating for her as an elderly person,” the lawyer said. “She was definitely at the end stages of her life, unfortunately. That happens to all of us. But here it seems that it was too easy to say she is not alive anymore let’s send her to a facility.”
Balducci had been living independently until she took a spill at her home on Aug. 1, 2022 landing her in the hospital before she was eventually placed at Water’s Edge on Sept. 6, 2022, DeNoto said.
The facility “prematurely declaring” Balducci dead caused Robert and Joseph “genuine mental and/or emotional distress,” according to their suit from last month.
Not only were the sons grappling with the guilt of their mother being placed in such a facility but they also have to live with knowing what happened to her in her final days, DeNoto said.
“It really is a sad case,” DeNoto said. “The end game is to send a message that you have to take your job seriously and you have to treat human beings with dignity and respect.”
The sons are also suing for premature and wrongful death after the nursing home failed to identify and treat Balducci’s deep vein thrombosis, the court papers claim.
DeNoto said another question he’s hoping will be answered is whether Balducci’s condition developed before or after she was placed in the body bag.
The sons are suing the nursing home for unspecified damages for its “extreme and outrageous conduct.”
The day of Balducci’s death, the case was referred to the New York State Attorney General’s Office and to the Suffolk County police.
But DeNoto said he’s filed two records requests with both agencies and the sons haven’t yet received any information about the status of those probes.
“We haven’t gotten any information as to what findings that have been made,” DeNoto said, adding they can only assume the investigations are still ongoing.
The nursing home and a lawyer for the funeral home didn’t immediately return requests for comment Thursday.