Three years to the day after Bob Dean finished evacuating 843 nursing home patients to a warehouse for Hurricane Ida, with deadly results, lawyers were back in a Jefferson Parish courtroom Wednesday asking a judge for more fees under a settlement that so far has paid out very little to Dean’s former patients.
At least 165 of those patients have died, the special master in the case, former state judge William “Rusty” Knight, said in court Wednesday.
Still, Knight predicted a breakthrough in the “relative near term” in what he described as the lone remaining roadblock to cutting those bigger checks: a dispute with the federal government over the need to reimburse Medicare for services many of Dean's patients received after the deadly debacle.
Judge Michael Mentz of the 24th Judicial District Court agreed that those federal liens were to blame for delays in releasing the bulk of the settlement funds. The class-action settlement leaves about $9 million in insurance proceeds to be divided among 428 claimants, after some $3 million for lawyers and administrative costs.
Reached in late 2022, it came after several of Dean’s patients died and dozens were hospitalized when conditions deteriorated at the warehouse in Independence.
Dean was a collector of homes, classic cars and antique weaponry, and authorities claimed he fed a lavish lifestyle with money siphoned from improvements slated for the emergency warehouse. State officials yanked the licenses for his seven nursing homes, and Dean soon faced a flurry of lawsuits, property seizures, and criminal charges.
Dean avoided sworn testimony while claiming he suffers from dementia. Last month, he pleaded no contest to 15 criminal charges, including eight counts of cruelty to the infirm. State Judge Brian Abels sentenced Dean, 71, to three years probation but declined to send him off to jail, deferring a 20-year sentence. Abels also ordered Dean to pay more than $1 million in civil penalties and restitution to the state.
In the meantime, claimants in the class action or their lawyers have received just $2,700 each over two small payments, according to Knight.
In addition to the insurance proceeds, officials said they've added up more than $1.4 million held in individual trust accounts for Dean’s patients. On Wednesday, Mentz approved a request by attorneys to tap 10% of that money in fees, adding to the more than $2 million the judge previously approved in attorneys fees from the settlement.
Madro Bandaries, who represents a woman bound to a wheelchair who lost a second leg to amputation after Dean's evacuation, opposed those fees. Bandaries argued that the lawyers didn’t really do anything to earn them.
“They already received a fee. Now they want to take the most downtrodden people in this state and plunder their own trust accounts,” Bandaries said.
Rob Couhig, among the lead plaintiffs' attorneys, reasoned that Dean would likely have stolen that money had they not intervened.
Couhig and other lawyers for the class had promised speed, noting the age and infirmity of the plaintiffs, when they urged Mentz to approve the settlement in late 2022. Some lawyers objected, saying they feared Dean could be hiding millions in assets that the settlement ignored.
"I don't think this was ever going to be quick," said Matthew Hemmer, an attorney with the Morris Bart firm, which represents dozens of claimants in the case and fought the 2022 settlement. “That said, I’m also surprised it’s not done.”
Knight urged more time to reach a deal with Medicare, expressing optimism in ongoing negotiations. Mentz set a status conference in the case for Sept. 26.
The judge insisted that the court had bent over backward to try to notify all of Dean’s former patients or their families before they closed the claim period.
Knight said they continue seeking names to divvy up the patient trust funds before any unclaimed money goes to the state. He urged anyone with a claim on those accounts to reach out to special master Ronald Faia, Jr. at (504) 908-9328, or by email at Rfaiajr@gmail.com.
