Kenosha Assisted Living Elopement Death: What a $4 Million Jury Verdict Means for Families Who Lost a Loved One in Memory Care
If you are reading this because your mother, your father, your grandmother disappeared from a memory care facility and was found outside in the cold — or because you are watching someone you love decline in a facility that promised safety and delivered indifference — you are in the right place, and you are not alone in what you are feeling. The rage, the guilt, the question that runs on a loop at 3 a.m.: How could they not have known she was gone? We have spent our careers answering that question in courtrooms, and the answer is almost never a mystery. It is a staffing sheet with a hole in it. It is an alarm that went off and was ignored. It is a care plan that was never written. It is a corporation that knew about the problem and chose not to fix it.
In December 2022, an 89-year-old memory care resident at Parkside Manor in Kenosha walked through a door that triggered an audible alarm at 12:41 a.m. The alarm was ignored for 28 minutes. She was not found until 7:45 a.m., when the day shift arrived and conducted a resident check. She had died of hypothermia outside the building where she was promised safety. In late November 2024, a Kenosha County jury ordered the facility’s operator to pay $4 million to her family, finding that Parkside Manor intentionally disregarded her safety. Three former employees face pending felony charges. The family has called on Wisconsin legislators to strengthen regulations and penalties against assisted living communities.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial lawyers who take wrongful death cases in Wisconsin and across the country, and we built this page for one reason: so that a family in Kenosha, or Racine, or Milwaukee, or anywhere in Wisconsin whose loved one was failed by an assisted living facility can read it at 2 a.m. and understand exactly what happened, what the law allows, what the evidence shows, and what to do next. Everything here is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the information below is real, it is specific to Wisconsin, and it is written by lawyers who have spent decades inside this fight.
What Happened at Parkside Manor: The Timeline of a Preventable Death
An 89-year-old woman with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease moved into Parkside Manor in June 2022. The facility is an assisted living and memory care community in Kenosha, operated by Encore Senior Living. Kenosha sits on the Lake Michigan shoreline between Milwaukee and Chicago, and December overnight temperatures in this region routinely fall into the teens or single digits, with lake-effect wind chill that accelerates hypothermia in anyone exposed — and especially in an elderly person with diminished thermoregulatory capacity and cognitive impairment that prevents her from finding her way back inside.
She had a history. Before she arrived at Parkside Manor, she had attempted to leave her previous memory care community. During her six months at Parkside Manor, she attempted to leave several times. This is not a subtle clinical profile. In the assisted living industry, this pattern has a name: elopement risk. It is one of the most recognized, most documented, most trained-for dangers in memory care. A resident who has attempted to leave before is a resident who will attempt to leave again, and the facility’s entire safety architecture — door alarms, staffing ratios, elopement assessments, care plans — is supposed to be built around that single, known fact.
On the night of December 19, 2022, she exited the building at 12:41 a.m. through a door that triggered an audible alarm. Two third-shift workers did not respond to that alarm for 28 minutes. They did not open the fire exit door. They did not check outside. A third employee had left memory care unit residents unattended during a two-and-a-half-hour break. The facility’s own staffing standard called for one worker per 10 residents overnight, and witnesses testified that the memory care unit was short-staffed that night. There was a documented pattern of third-shift workers sleeping on the job or leaving the building, and the operator had not addressed it.
She was not found until 7:45 a.m. — nearly seven hours after she walked out. It was the day shift, not the night shift, that discovered she was missing from her room. By then, she had died of hypothermia, steps from a locked door that no one on the overnight shift ever checked.
The Jury’s Finding: “Intentional Disregard” — and Why That Word Matters
After a four-day trial, a Kenosha County jury found that Parkside Manor intentionally disregarded the safety of this resident, leading to her death. That phrase is not just a description. In Wisconsin law, it is a legal term of art with specific consequences.
Wisconsin’s punitive damages doctrine requires a showing of intentional disregard for the rights or safety of others to unlock punishment damages beyond compensation. The jury’s express finding that Parkside Manor intentionally disregarded this resident’s safety is the finding that opens the door to punitive damages under Wisconsin law. It is also the finding that separates this case from an ordinary negligence claim — it tells the defendant and the community that this was not a mistake. It was a choice.
Wisconsin law permits punitive damages when a defendant’s conduct demonstrates “intentional disregard for the rights or safety of others.” A Kenosha County jury expressly found that Parkside Manor intentionally disregarded this resident’s safety — satisfying that heightened standard.
The evidence supporting this finding was not circumstantial. It was the facility’s own paper trail: a known pattern of third-shift workers sleeping on the job or leaving the building, a failure to meet the facility’s own 1:10 overnight staffing ratio, a failure to identify this resident as an elopement risk despite her documented history of attempting to leave, and a failure to respond to a triggered door alarm for 28 minutes. The classic punitive template is simple: known risk plus ignored cheap remedy. The facility knew the risk. The remedy — adequate staffing, functioning alarm response, an elopement risk assessment — was cheap. It was ignored. And a woman died outside in the cold.
Wisconsin Wrongful Death Law: What the Statute Allows and Who Can File
Wisconsin’s wrongful death statute permits the personal representative of the decedent’s estate to bring an action for the benefit of the surviving family members — the spouse, children, and in some cases parents or other dependents. The action compensates the family for the loss of society and companionship of their loved one, as well as associated economic losses including funeral and burial costs and any medical expenses incurred between the injury and death.
The deadline to file. Wisconsin’s wrongful death statute sets a limitations period — and this is a deadline that kills cases. We state it here as doctrine: in Wisconsin, a wrongful death action generally must be brought within three years of the date of death. That clock starts on the day your loved one died, not the day you discovered the facility was at fault. If you miss it, the case is over — no matter how strong the evidence, no matter how egregious the conduct. A lawyer in Wisconsin must confirm the exact deadline against the current statute at the time of intake, because rules can change and certain tolling doctrines may apply. But the default assumption should be: three years from the date of death, and possibly shorter if any government-entity notice requirements are implicated.
Comparative fault. Wisconsin follows a modified comparative negligence system. Under this rule, your own share of fault reduces your recovery, and if your share reaches a certain threshold — in Wisconsin, 51% — your recovery is barred entirely. In practice, comparative fault is unlikely to apply meaningfully in an assisted living elopement case. The resident’s cognitive impairment means she could not be at fault for wandering — wandering is the symptom of the disease the facility was contracted to manage. The facility’s duty was to protect against precisely this type of elopement. But the defense will try, because every percentage point they pin on the resident or the family is money off their bill. Every point is money.
No medical-malpractice damage cap. Wisconsin does not impose the medical-malpractice noneconomic damage cap on ordinary negligence claims against assisted living facilities. This means the full compensatory award — including the family’s loss of society and companionship, and any survival component for the resident’s pre-death pain and suffering — is not subject to the statutory cap that applies in malpractice contexts. This is a significant advantage for families pursuing assisted living negligence claims, and it is one of the reasons these cases can carry meaningful value when the liability is clear.
Punitive damages allocation. Wisconsin maintains a distinctive allocation rule for punitive damages that may direct a portion of any punitive component to a state trust fund. This is a Wisconsin-specific framework that counsel must verify under the current statutory scheme at the time of intake. What it means practically is that the net recovery to the family from a punitive damages award may be reduced by the state’s allocated share — but the existence of the punitive finding itself drives settlement pressure and verdict value.
The Defendant Structure: Who Is Really Responsible When a Memory Care Resident Dies
The name on the door of an assisted living facility is rarely the whole story. The “facility” is a deliberate stack of entities, each designed to serve a different function — and each potentially a different defendant.
Parkside Manor is the licensed assisted living and memory care community where the elopement occurred. It is the facility entity responsible for premises safety, door alarm functionality, elopement prevention protocols, and adherence to its own staffing standards and Wisconsin Department of Health Services regulatory requirements.
Encore Senior Living is the operator. Encore directly controlled staffing decisions, training protocols, resident assessment procedures, and overall safety management at Parkside Manor. The jury found intentional disregard of resident safety under Encore’s operational control. This is the entity that set the budget, hired the staff, wrote the policies, and made the decisions — or failed to make the decisions — that left an 89-year-old woman outside in the Wisconsin winter.
But the defendant analysis does not stop there. Potential parent or affiliate entities of Encore Senior Living are a discovery target. Corporate structures in the senior living industry are designed to separate the operating entity — which may hold few assets — from the entities that hold the real estate, the management contracts, and the insurance coverage. Tracing the corporate structure, ownership, insurance coverage, and any operational control or financial interdependence is essential to expanding the defendant pool and identifying collectible assets. A facility that pleads poverty may be paying “management fees” to a commonly-owned entity that holds the money the operating LLC claims it does not have.
The three criminally charged former employees. Three individuals — Susan Valentin, Liliana Lozano, and Demontae Collins — were charged with felony reckless abuse of patients causing death in Kenosha County Circuit Court. Two are accused of failing to respond to the audible alarm for 28 minutes and not following protocols to check on residents. The third is accused of leaving memory care unit residents unattended during a two-and-a-half-hour overnight break. Their criminal cases are pending. Criminal charges against individual employees do not, by themselves, establish civil liability against the facility — but they are powerful evidence, and any criminal admissions or convictions create collateral-estoppel and evidentiary value in parallel or subsequent civil litigation. The facility cannot simply blame its own employees and walk away; under Wisconsin law, an employer is generally responsible for the acts of its employees within the scope of their employment, and the facility’s own systemic failures — understaffing, ignored patterns, missing assessments — are independent grounds for liability that exist regardless of individual employee conduct.
The Regulatory Framework: What Wisconsin Requires of Assisted Living Facilities
Assisted living facilities in Wisconsin are regulated under the state’s DHS administrative code provisions governing Community-Based Residential Facilities, or CBRFs. These regulations establish minimum requirements for staffing ratios, resident assessments, behavior management, safety systems including door alarms, and elopement prevention protocols.
The Wisconsin Division of Quality Assurance, or DQA, enforces these regulations through investigations, deficiency citations, admission moratoria, and civil money penalties. In the Parkside Manor case, DQA investigated after the death, and in January 2023, the state Department of Health Services barred the community from accepting new residents until it complied with health and safety standards. The state ordered compliance for behavior management and door alarms and assessed a $1,900 fine for code and administrative violations.
Here is what families need to understand about that $1,900 fine: it is the regulatory system’s version of justice, and it is nowhere near proportional to what happened. A woman died of hypothermia outside a facility that was paid to keep her safe, and the regulatory consequence was a fine smaller than many families’ monthly assisted living bill and a temporary ban on new admissions. The civil justice system — the $4 million jury verdict — was the only mechanism that imposed consequences meaningful enough to register on the operator’s balance sheet. This is not a criticism of the regulators, who do important work with limited tools. It is a statement of fact: regulatory enforcement alone does not hold facilities accountable in the way that a wrongful death verdict does. The regulatory findings — the DQA investigation file, the deficiency citations, the admission moratorium — are also powerful evidence in a civil case, because they provide independent, government-verified corroboration of the facility’s failures.
While federal CMS conditions of participation and OBRA standards technically apply to certified nursing homes rather than assisted living communities, the underlying principles of adequate staffing, resident safety, and individualized care planning inform the standard of care in the assisted living context. A facility that cannot meet its own staffing standard, that cannot respond to its own door alarms, that cannot identify a documented elopement risk — that facility has fallen below every recognized standard of care in the industry, federal or state.
The Evidence: What Records Exist, Who Holds Them, and How Fast They Disappear
Every assisted living negligence case is built on records. The facility created documents every single day that this resident was in their care, and those documents are the proof. But they do not last forever, and some of them die on a clock that runs faster than most families realize.
Door alarm system logs and event history. These records establish the exact timestamp of the resident’s exit — 12:41 a.m. in this case — and prove the alarm activated, creating the duty to respond that staff breached. The alarm logs also reveal whether the system was properly maintained and functioning. Digital alarm logs may have limited retention cycles. In a post-verdict posture these were likely obtained in discovery, but for comparable cases, preservation letters must issue within days.
Overnight staffing schedules and time-keeping records. These records prove the 1:10 staffing ratio violation and document the two-and-a-half-hour absence of the employee who left the unit unattended. They establish the staffing void that directly enabled the elopement. Schedules and time records may be routinely purged per retention policies. Immediate preservation demand is required for comparable cases.
Resident intake assessment and care plan records. These demonstrate whether the facility properly assessed the resident’s elopement risk at admission and whether they updated her care plan despite documented attempts to leave both her prior community and Parkside Manor. Medical records retention is generally longer, but facility operational records can be lost in ownership transitions or facility closures.
Internal incident reports and prior elopement documentation. This is the highest-priority preservation target. These records establish the pattern of third-shift sleeping and departure issues that management knew about and failed to correct. They are central to the punitive damages showing of intentional disregard. Internal incident reports are particularly vulnerable to routine destruction.
CCTV and security camera footage. Camera footage of exits and common areas would show staff activity — or inactivity — during the alarm period, whether anyone investigated, and the exact circumstances of the resident’s exit. It may also show prior instances of staff sleeping or leaving. CCTV systems typically overwrite on 7-to-30-day cycles. Days matter.
Employee training records and policy manuals. These establish what alarm-response and elopement-prevention protocols existed and whether staff were actually trained on them. Gaps in training records support negligent training and supervision theories.
Wisconsin DQA investigation file and deficiency citations. These are public record but should be obtained and catalogued immediately as foundational liability evidence. The admission moratorium and the fine document the state’s own conclusion that health and safety standards were violated.
Criminal court filings and prosecution evidence. The criminal complaint allegations and any prosecution discovery can be leveraged in civil proceedings. Criminal admissions or convictions create powerful collateral-estoppel or evidentiary value. The criminal cases against the three employees are pending in Kenosha County Circuit Court, and monitoring filings and coordinating with prosecutorial timelines is essential.
The single most important step in any assisted living negligence case — and the step that costs the family nothing — is the preservation letter. The day you call a lawyer is the day that letter goes out, ordering the facility to freeze every record, every log, every video, every schedule, every incident report. Without that letter, the facility’s own retention policies may legally erase the proof before anyone ever asks for it. With that letter, any record that disappears after notice becomes spoliation — and a judge can tell the jury to assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says it was.
The Medicine of Hypothermia: What She Endured in the Seven Hours No One Came Looking
Hypothermia is not a gentle drift into sleep. It is a progressive, violent unraveling of the body’s most basic systems, and in an 89-year-old woman with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, it moves faster and hits harder than it would in a younger, healthier person.
The body maintains its core temperature through a system of thermoregulation that depends on the brain’s hypothalamus, the cardiovascular system’s ability to redirect blood flow, and the muscles’ ability to generate heat through shivering. In advanced age, all three of these systems are compromised. The elderly have diminished thermoregulatory capacity — their bodies cannot sense cold as acutely, cannot shiver as effectively, and cannot redirect blood flow to protect the core as efficiently. Add dementia, and the cognitive impairment prevents the most basic survival response: recognizing that you are cold, that you are lost, that the door you came out of is the door you need to go back through.
December in Kenosha means overnight temperatures in the teens or single digits, with lake-effect wind off Lake Michigan driving the wind chill lower. The human body loses heat through radiation, convection, conduction, and evaporation. Wind accelerates convective heat loss dramatically — a 15-degree air temperature with a 20-mile-per-hour wind produces a wind chill that strips heat from exposed skin far faster than the still-air temperature alone. An elderly person in whatever she was wearing when she walked out at 12:41 a.m. — likely a nightgown, possibly a robe, almost certainly not winter clothing — would begin losing core body heat within minutes.
The progression of hypothermia follows a grim arc. In mild hypothermia, the body shivers, the mind becomes confused, and motor coordination begins to decline. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops — the body has exhausted that defense — and confusion deepens into disorientation. The person may paradoxically remove clothing, a phenomenon called paradoxical undressing, as the blood vessels near the skin suddenly dilate and the brain misinterprets the rush of blood as overheating. In severe hypothermia, the heart’s electrical system becomes unstable. Arrhythmias develop. The blood pressure drops. The person loses consciousness. And in the final stage, the heart’s rhythm degenerates into ventricular fibrillation — a chaotic, disorganized electrical pattern that stops the heart from pumping blood — and the person dies.
This progression unfolded over approximately seven hours. Seven hours during which the door she came out of was steps away. Seven hours during which no one on the overnight shift checked the alarm, opened the exit door, or walked the perimeter. Seven hours during which the day shift had not yet arrived to discover she was gone.
The forensic medical narrative of hypothermia in a vulnerable, cognitively impaired elder is one of the most powerful damages amplifiers in any wrongful death case. The mechanism involves progressive disorientation, loss of motor function, paradoxical undressing, and terminal arrhythmia — all while the resident was steps from a locked door that staff never checked. A survival action, if pursued, captures the pre-death pain and suffering during those seven hours. That is not a number a jury forgets.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: What the Facility’s Representatives Will Try — and How to Counter Each Move
When an assisted living facility faces a wrongful death claim, the insurance company and the facility’s risk management team activate a playbook that is designed to minimize payout, control the narrative, and resolve the case before the family understands what it is worth. We know this playbook because Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the reader. Now he sits on your side of the table.
Play 1: “We’re conducting our own internal investigation.”
This sounds responsible. It is not. The facility’s internal investigation is designed to build the defense, not to find the truth. Risk management will interview employees with a defense-oriented script, document conditions in the most favorable light, and generate a report that frames the death as an unforeseeable tragedy rather than a systemic failure. The counter: the preservation letter goes out immediately, freezing all records before the internal investigation can shape or destroy them. Independent investigation — through DQA records, criminal court filings, and the family’s own counsel — runs in parallel and cannot be controlled by the facility.
Play 2: “The resident had dementia — she was going to wander anyway.”
This is the cruelest play in the book, and it is the one adjusters reach for first. The argument is that elopement is an inevitable symptom of dementia, so the facility cannot be blamed for what the disease caused. The counter is devastating and simple: wandering is the disease. Preventing wandering is the job. A memory care facility that accepts a resident with known elopement risk is accepting a contractual and legal duty to prevent exactly this outcome. The resident’s dementia is not a defense — it is the reason she was there in the first place. The facility’s failure to assess her elopement risk, despite her documented history, is not the disease’s fault. It is the facility’s failure.
Play 3: “The state already fined us — it’s been addressed.”
The $1,900 fine and the admission moratorium are regulatory consequences, not civil liability. The adjuster will point to them as evidence that the facility “took responsibility” and “already paid.” The counter: a $1,900 fine is not accountability for a death. The regulatory system and the civil justice system serve different functions. The regulatory fine addresses code compliance. The wrongful death verdict addresses the value of a human life and the punishment of intentional disregard. One does not substitute for the other.
Play 4: The quick settlement offer before criminal cases resolve.
A fast check may arrive with a release attached, before the family has had time to understand the full scope of what happened, and before the criminal cases against the three employees produce testimony, plea deals, or convictions that could dramatically strengthen the civil case. The counter: never sign a release in the first weeks. The criminal proceedings are a parallel evidence-development engine, and their outcome — admissions, convictions, cooperating testimony — can transform the civil case’s value. A settlement signed too early trades the full value for a fraction.
Play 5: Surveillance and social media monitoring.
The adjuster may have the family under social-media surveillance from the early days of the claim, looking for posts that can be framed as inconsistent with grief or damages. The counter: assume you are being watched. Do not post about the case, the facility, the settlement, or your family’s emotional state on any platform. Tell your friends and family the same.
How a Case Like This Is Built: From Preservation Letter to Jury Verdict
Here is how an assisted living elopement wrongful death case is actually built — the chronological walk from the day a family calls to the day a jury returns a verdict.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out, freezing the alarm logs, the staffing schedules, the care plans, the incident reports, the CCTV, the training records, the policy manuals, and every internal communication about the incident. The DQA investigation file is requested. The criminal court filings in Kenosha County Circuit Court are pulled and monitored. The family is connected with a personal representative appointment process if one has not already been established — because in Wisconsin, the personal representative is the person the law authorizes to bring the wrongful death action.
Weeks two through eight. Records come in. The staffing schedules are matched against the facility’s own 1:10 standard. The alarm logs are mapped against the staffing assignments. The intake assessment is reviewed for the elopement risk identification that should have been there and was not. The prior incident reports are catalogued — each one a brick in the wall of intentional disregard. Expert witnesses are retained: a geriatric care management specialist to testify to the industry-standard elopement-prevention protocols the facility violated, a forensic meteorologist to quantify the lethal exposure timeline and correlate it with the alarm-response gap, and a former assisted living administrator to testify that what happened here is not how a memory care facility is supposed to operate.
Months two through six. Discovery proceeds. Deppositions are taken — not just of the employees on duty that night, but of the administrators who knew about the third-shift sleeping pattern and did nothing, the intake nurse who failed to identify the elopement risk, and the corporate representatives who set the staffing budget. The criminal cases against the three employees are monitored for collateral-estoppel value. Any criminal admissions or plea deals are tracked for their evidentiary impact on the civil case.
The proof story a jury hears. The jury hears about a woman who was 89 years old, who had dementia, who had tried to leave before — and whose facility knew it. They hear about a door alarm that went off at 12:41 a.m. and was ignored for 28 minutes. They hear about a third-shift employee who left the unit unattended for two and a half hours. They hear about a staffing ratio that was not met. They hear about a pattern of third-shift sleeping and leaving that management knew about and did not fix. They hear about seven hours in the Wisconsin winter. And they hear about a $1,900 fine that was the regulatory system’s entire response.
The number at the end is built from all of it — the loss of society and companionship, the pre-death pain and suffering of seven hours of hypothermia, the funeral costs, and the punitive damages that flow from the intentional disregard finding. In this case, the jury’s number was $4 million.
What a Case Like This Is Worth: Honest Valuation
The $4 million verdict in this case is a real jury outcome, and it provides a data point for what a Kenosha County jury will do when presented with an assisted living elopement death involving intentional disregard. But every case is different, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Post-verdict net recovery. The net recovery to the family in this case likely ranges from approximately $2.5 million to $4 million, accounting for potential appellate reduction, Wisconsin’s distinctive punitive-damages allocation rule (which may divert a portion of any punitive component to a state fund — counsel must verify the current statutory split), and collectibility factors dependent on Encore Senior Living’s insurance coverage and asset profile.
Comparable future cases. Elopement-death cases in Wisconsin with intentional-disregard findings and comparable aggravating factors — known staffing failures, ignored alarms, failed elopement assessments — would reasonably project in the $2 million to $7 million range depending on liability clarity, defendant asset depth, and venue. Cases without the intentional-disregard predicate would carry lower punitive exposure. Cases with weaker liability or more complex causation would carry lower compensatory value.
What drives the value. The value drivers in an assisted living elopement death case are: the clarity of the liability evidence (ignored alarms, documented staffing failures, known elopement risk); the severity and duration of the harm (hypothermia over seven hours is among the most compelling pre-death suffering narratives a jury can hear); the defendant’s conduct (intentional disregard opens punitive damages); the defendant’s financial depth (insurance coverage, corporate assets, parent-entity resources); and the venue (a Kenosha County jury pool of working- and middle-class residents tends to respond strongly to elder-vulnerability narratives and institutional neglect evidence).
What reduces the value. The value reducers are: comparative fault arguments (unlikely to succeed in a cognitive-impairment elopement case but always attempted); damage caps (Wisconsin does not impose the med-mal cap on ordinary assisted living negligence, but punitive damages allocation rules reduce the net); collectibility risk (if the operator is thinly capitalized or underinsured, the gross verdict may exceed the collectible recovery); and appellate reduction (a $4 million verdict may face post-trial motions or appeal).
The First 72 Hours: What to Do If Your Loved One Was Harmed in an Assisted Living Facility
Day one. If your loved one is still alive, get them to a hospital — not the facility’s affiliated clinic, an independent hospital. If your loved one has died, do not sign anything the facility gives you. Do not accept the facility’s explanation at face value. Do not agree to meet with the facility’s risk manager or insurance representative alone. Do not post on social media. Do sign nothing. Do say nothing beyond “I need to speak with an attorney before I discuss this further.”
Day two. Call a lawyer. The consultation is free, and it costs you nothing to learn whether you have a case. The preservation letter — the single most important document in the early days — can go out the day you call. Every day you wait is a day the facility’s records are one day closer to being legally destroyed. CCTV overwrites itself. Staffing schedules get purged. Incident reports “cannot be located.” The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Day three. Request the resident’s complete medical and care-plan records from the facility, in writing. Wisconsin law gives residents and their authorized representatives the right to access these records. The facility’s response — or lack of response — is itself evidence. Pull the Wisconsin DQA investigation file, which is public record. If criminal charges have been filed against any employees, pull the criminal complaint from Kenosha County Circuit Court. Begin documenting everything you remember: the promises the facility made at admission, the conditions you observed during visits, the complaints you made and the responses you received.
What not to do. Do not speak to the facility’s insurance adjuster. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not accept a quick settlement check. Do not let the facility’s representative into your home or your loved one’s hospital room. Do not sign a release, an arbitration agreement, or any document the facility presents as “routine paperwork.” Do not assume the facility is being honest with you about what happened. Do not wait to see if the regulatory investigation “handles it.” The regulatory investigation will produce a fine and a citation. It will not produce justice.
The Firm: Who We Are and Why We Fight This Fight
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are based in Houston, Texas, and we take wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases in Wisconsin, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not claim an office in Wisconsin. We do claim something more important: the training, the experience, and the trial record to fight for a Wisconsin family against a corporate defendant that promised safety and delivered neglect.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been licensed since November 6, 1998 — 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the documents are hiding and tell it to a jury in language they cannot forget. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas. He does not like losing.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He was licensed in December 2012 — 13+ years of trial practice. He is also admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. Before he joined this firm, Lupe spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how claims are valued from the inside. He knows the recorded-statement trap, the IME-doctor selection, the surveillance, and the delay tactics. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. And he conducts full consultations in Spanish — without an interpreter. Hablamos Español.
Our fee. We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. The preservation letter is free. The case evaluation is free. You pay nothing out of pocket to learn whether you have a case and what it is worth.
Our hotline. 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). It is answered 24/7 by live staff — not an answering service. If you are reading this at 2 a.m., call. If you are reading this on a Sunday, call. If you are in a hospital waiting room or at a kitchen table with a folder of paperwork you do not understand, call.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit against an assisted living facility in Wisconsin?
Wisconsin’s wrongful death statute generally requires that the action be brought within three years of the date of death. The clock starts on the day your loved one died, not the day you discovered the facility was at fault. This is a hard deadline — miss it and the case is over regardless of how strong the evidence is. An attorney must confirm the exact deadline against the current statute at the time of intake, because rules can change and certain tolling doctrines may apply. The safest approach is to call a lawyer immediately, not after the first or second year has passed.
Can I sue if my loved one had dementia and was the one who wandered out?
Yes. Wandering is the symptom of the disease. Preventing wandering is the job the facility was paid to do. A memory care facility that accepts a resident with known elopement risk assumes a legal duty to prevent exactly that outcome. The resident’s dementia is not a defense for the facility — it is the reason the resident was there in the first place. Wisconsin’s comparative negligence rule is unlikely to reduce your recovery in an elopement case, because a cognitively impaired resident cannot be at fault for the symptoms of her impairment. The facility knew the risk. The facility’s duty was to manage it. If they failed, the failure is theirs.
What is “intentional disregard” and why does it matter in my case?
In Wisconsin, punitive damages require a showing that the defendant acted with intentional disregard for the rights or safety of others. This is a heightened standard above ordinary negligence. It means the defendant knew about a risk and chose to ignore it. In the Parkside Manor case, the jury found intentional disregard based on the facility’s actual knowledge of third-shift staffing failures and the resident’s elopement attempts, combined with its failure to take corrective action. Intentional disregard matters because it unlocks punitive damages, which drive verdict value and settlement pressure beyond the compensatory amount.
The state already investigated and fined the facility. Do I still have a case?
Yes. The regulatory investigation and the civil justice system serve different functions. The Wisconsin DQA investigation produces deficiency citations, admission moratoria, and civil money penalties — in this case, a $1,900 fine and a temporary ban on new admissions. These are regulatory consequences, not civil liability. They do not compensate the family for the loss of their loved one. They do not punish the facility in proportion to the harm. The civil justice system is the only mechanism that imposes consequences meaningful enough to register on the operator’s balance sheet. The DQA findings are also powerful evidence in a civil case, because they provide independent, government-verified corroboration of the facility’s failures.
Three employees were criminally charged. Does that help my civil case?
It can, significantly. Criminal charges against individual employees do not automatically establish civil liability against the facility, but they are powerful evidence. Any criminal admissions, plea deals, or convictions create collateral-estoppel and evidentiary value in parallel civil litigation. A criminal conviction for reckless abuse causing death is evidence that a jury in a civil case will hear about. The criminal proceedings also produce testimony, sworn statements, and discovery that can be leveraged in the civil case. The criminal cases against the three former Parkside Manor employees are pending in Kenosha County Circuit Court, and monitoring those proceedings is an essential part of building the civil case.
How much is my assisted living negligence case worth?
Every case is different, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The $4 million verdict in the Parkside Manor case provides a data point for what a Kenosha County jury will do when presented with an elopement death involving intentional disregard, ignored alarms, staffing failures, and a known elopement risk. Comparable cases in Wisconsin with similar aggravating factors would reasonably project in the $2 million to $7 million range depending on liability clarity, defendant asset depth, and venue. The specific value of your case depends on the strength of the liability evidence, the severity and duration of the harm, the defendant’s conduct, the defendant’s financial depth, and the venue. An honest case evaluation requires reviewing the specific facts, the records, and the defendant’s coverage — which is why the consultation is free.
What if the facility says it was an accident and no one could have prevented it?
That is the defense’s framing, and it is almost always wrong. An elopement death in a memory care facility is not an accident. It is the foreseeable result of a cascade of specific, identifiable failures: a failure to assess elopement risk, a failure to staff to the facility’s own standard, a failure to respond to a door alarm, a failure to correct a known pattern of third-shift sleeping and leaving. Each of these failures is a choice the facility made — or failed to make. The industry has recognized elopement as a primary safety risk in memory care for decades. The protocols to prevent it are well-established, inexpensive, and widely known. When a facility does not implement them, the result is not an accident. It is neglect.
Should I accept the facility’s settlement offer?
Not without speaking to a lawyer first. A settlement offer from the facility’s insurance company in the early days of a claim is almost always a fraction of what the case is worth. The adjuster’s goal is to resolve the case before the family understands the full scope of what happened, before the records are obtained, before the criminal cases resolve, and before the full value of the claim is developed. A release signed too early trades the full value for a fraction — and once a release is signed, the case is over. There is no second chance. The consultation is free. The case evaluation is free. There is no reason to accept an offer before you know what your case is actually worth.
How do I know if the assisted living facility is underinsured or may not be able to pay a verdict?
This is a question a lawyer answers through investigation. The operating entity named on the facility’s license may be a thinly capitalized LLC with few assets. The real money may sit one entity up the ownership chain — in a parent company, a management company, a real estate holding entity, or an insurance tower that the operating LLC does not directly disclose. Tracing the corporate structure, identifying the insurance coverage, and naming the right defendants is foundational work that determines whether a verdict can actually be collected. A $4 million verdict against an empty shell is worth nothing. A $4 million verdict against the right defendants with the right coverage is worth $4 million.
What should I do right now?
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The preservation letter is free. There is no fee unless we win your case. If you are not sure whether you have a case, the call costs you nothing to find out. If you are sure you have a case but do not know what to do next, the call is the next step. If you are reading this at 2 a.m. from a kitchen table in Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee, or anywhere in Wisconsin — we answer 24/7. You do not have to figure this out alone.
The Bottom Line for Wisconsin Families
An assisted living facility that accepts a memory care resident with known elopement risk is making a promise: we will keep her safe. When that promise is broken — when the door alarm goes off and no one responds, when the overnight shift is understaffed and unsupervised, when the elopement assessment was never done, when the pattern of third-shift failures was known and ignored — the result is not a tragedy. It is a breach of duty that caused a death. And in Wisconsin, when a jury finds that the breach was intentional disregard for the resident’s safety, the law allows the family to recover not just for what they lost, but to punish the choice that took it.
The $4 million verdict in Kenosha is a signal. It tells every assisted living operator in Wisconsin that a jury will hold them accountable when they intentionally disregard the safety of the people they promised to protect. It tells every family who has lost a loved one in a memory care facility that the civil justice system is the mechanism that works — the only one that imposes consequences proportionate to the harm.
If your family has been failed by an assisted living facility in Wisconsin, call us. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win your case. We handle wrongful death cases in Wisconsin, and we will tell you honestly whether you have a case and what it is worth. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too.
1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). 24/7. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.