A WOMAN’S family is demanding answers after she was mistakenly declared dead, placed inside a body bag, and sent to a funeral home.
Janet Balducci, 82, was set to be embalmed when a worker discovered her alive and breathing inside the body bag.
Balducci was living at the Water’s Edge Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Long Island, New York, when a nurse declared her dead on February 4, 2023.
However, once she arrived at the Casimir Funeral Home, an employee opened the body bag and discovered that she was “still breathing and had a pulse,” Peter DeNoto, the Balducci family lawyer, told The New York Post.
Emergency services were called and Janet was rushed to the hospital where she survived for a day but then died, said DeNoto.
Janet’s sons, Robert and Joseph Balducci, are now suing the nursing home and funeral home for allegations of negligence and wrongful death.
They’re hoping the lawsuit, filed with the Suffolk County Supreme Court, will answer their questions about how the error was allowed to happen, said DeNoto.
“Did the nurse follow the criteria for determining whether somebody is dead and did a doctor confirm what the nurse found?” he said, referring to some of the questions the family has been left with.
“There really is no excuse for putting a live person in a body bag and sending them to a facility for embalming.”
DeNoto said the case points to a larger problem of elder neglect at nursing homes, even when a family is highly involved in a case.
“There was nobody there advocating for her as an elderly person,” he 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.'”
Janet’s family moved her to Water’s Edge after she fell in her home on August 1, 2022, according to DeNoto.
She’d previously lived independently but had to be taken to the hospital and then placed at the long-term care facility on September 6, 2022.
Robert and Joseph’s lawsuit claims their mother’s wrongful death caused them “genuine mental and/or emotional distress.”
DeNoto said the sons had already felt guilty placing their mother at the facility but now they have to live with knowing what happened in her final days.
“It really is a sad case,” said DeNoto.
“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 also claim in the lawsuit that the nursing home failed to treat their mother’s deep vein thrombosis.
The court documents allege Janet’s condition worsened as the nursing home workers did nothing to help.
The family is suing the nursing home for unspecified damages for its “extreme and outrageous conduct.”
The day Janet died, the case was referred to the New York State Attorney General’s Office and to the Suffolk County police.
DeNoto said he filed two record requests with both agencies but the sons haven’t received any information from them.
“We haven’t gotten any information as to what findings have been made,” he said, adding that they assume the investigations are still ongoing.
The U.S. Sun reached out to the nursing home and funeral home for comment.
