Hammonton & Deptford, NJ: A State Investigation Just Validated What Families Suspected — and Your Clock Is Running
If your mother, father, brother, or sister lived at the Hammonton Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Atlantic County or the Deptford Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Gloucester County between 2019 and 2024, you need to read this page carefully and you need to read it now. Not next week. Not after the holidays. Now.
On December 10, 2025, the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller released the results of a five-year investigation into both facilities. The findings are not a suggestion of problems. They are a government-validated roadmap of intentional misconduct. The Comptroller’s office accused the owners — Daryl Hagler and Kenneth Rozenberg — of deliberately understaffing the homes while funneling $92 million of Medicaid money to themselves. Over those five years, the facilities received more than $134 million in Medicaid funding for patient care. The residents received soiled diapers left unchanged for hours, medications that were never administered, call bells that rang into silence, and bathrooms a family member publicly described as “gross.”
During that same five-year window, local police were called to the two facilities 3,400 times. Two residents were allegedly sexually assaulted. A third resident died. The state is now demanding $124 million in repayments.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We take catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases in New Jersey, working with local counsel where required. We are writing this page to you, the family member sitting at a kitchen table at 2 a.m. who just found out that the neglect you suspected was not your imagination. It was a documented corporate policy. The question is no longer whether it happened. The question is whether your family’s claim is still alive — and the answer to that question is measured in days and months, not years.
What the State Comptroller Actually Found — and Why It Matters to Your Family
The Comptroller’s report is an extraordinary litigation asset for any family with a loved one who was harmed at either facility. Here is why: in an ordinary nursing home neglect case, proving that the understaffing was intentional — not just an accident, not just a scheduling error, but a deliberate choice to sacrifice resident safety for owner profit — takes years of discovery, forensic accounting, and corporate depositions. The state of New Jersey has already done that work. Over five years, investigators traced the money and documented the pattern.
The core finding is devastating in its simplicity. The facilities received $134 million in Medicaid funding that was supposed to pay for resident care. The owners diverted $92 million of it to themselves. The understaffing was not a byproduct of financial difficulty. It was the mechanism of the enrichment. Every dollar saved by not hiring enough nurses and aides was a dollar available to be pulled out. The neglect was the business model.
The conditions investigators documented are the foreseeable consequences of that model. Residents left in soiled diapers for hours — which is not just undignified but medically dangerous, because prolonged exposure to urine and feces breaks down skin and creates pressure injuries that can progress to bone-deep wounds. Medications missed — which for elderly residents on blood thinners, cardiac drugs, insulin, and antibiotics can mean the difference between stability and a stroke, a heart attack, sepsis, or death. Call bells going unanswered — which means a resident who fell, who was in pain, who needed help to the bathroom, who was being threatened by another resident, lay alone and waiting while the one aide covering forty rooms could not get there.
And then the events that the Comptroller’s report says happened at these facilities during those five years: two residents sexually assaulted, and a third resident who died. The sexual assaults are the foreseeable result of an understaffed facility where vulnerable residents — many with cognitive impairment, many unable to report or resist — are left without adequate supervision. In a knowingly understaffed environment, the facility’s own failure to protect is not negligence. It is the direct, foreseeable product of a budget choice made at the top.
A family member of a current Deptford resident went public with what she has been seeing. Her words are her own, reported in the coverage of the investigation:
“The lack of care is awful. The beds seem disgusting and the bathrooms are gross. I don’t think they really do their laundry.”
That is not a lawyer’s characterization. That is a sister, describing what she found when she visited her brother. And now the state of New Jersey has put its own authority behind the finding that this was not isolated. It was the pattern.
The Federal Law These Homes Were Already Bound By — and What They Violated
Every nursing home in the United States that accepts Medicare or Medicaid funding is bound by federal law — specifically, the requirements of participation codified in 42 CFR Part 483. These are not aspirations. They are conditions of participation. A facility that violates them is a facility that the government has determined should not be allowed to keep its license. The Comptroller’s findings map directly onto specific federal duties that these facilities were legally required to meet.
The staffing duty — “sufficient” is the word the law uses
Federal law does not say a nursing home should try to have enough staff. It says the facility “must provide services by sufficient numbers of each of the following types of personnel on a 24-hour basis to provide nursing care to all residents in accordance with resident care plans.” That is 42 CFR § 483.35(a). The word “sufficient” is doing heavy lifting here. It is not a fixed number — it is tied to what each resident actually needs, as documented in their care plan. If the care plan says a resident needs to be turned every two hours to prevent pressure ulcers, and the staffing level makes that impossible, the facility is in violation. Not of a suggestion. Of a federal requirement.
The live federal floor also includes a specific registered-nurse requirement:
“The facility must use the services of a registered nurse for at least 8 consecutive hours a day, 7 days a week.”
That is 42 CFR § 483.35(b)(1) — verified, current law. It means a registered nurse must be physically present in the building for at least eight hours every single day. For the other sixteen hours of each day, the federal floor does not require a single RN on site. That gap — the night shift, the early morning, the hours when residents are most vulnerable and families are not visiting — is exactly where understaffing produces its worst harm.
There is an important note about what the law does NOT currently require. In 2024, CMS finalized a rule that would have set specific minimum hours of nursing care per resident per day — 3.48 total hours, including specific RN and nurse-aide thresholds, plus a 24/7 onsite RN. That mandate was vacated by a federal court in April 2025, barred by Congress through September 2034, and repealed by CMS effective February 2026. It is no longer law. But the duty to staff “sufficient[ly]” for residents’ needs never went away — and a facility that staffs below what its own residents’ care plans require violates that duty regardless of whether a specific federal number exists.
The facility assessment — the home’s own yardstick
Federal law also requires every nursing home to conduct and document a “facility assessment” — a written evaluation of its resident population, their acuity, their needs, and the staffing and resources required to meet those needs. That assessment is supposed to “inform staffing decisions to ensure sufficient staff with appropriate competencies and skill sets necessary to care for residents’ needs.” This is at 42 CFR § 483.71. What makes this provision powerful in a litigation context is that the facility’s own assessment becomes the measuring stick. If the assessment says the facility needs twelve certified nursing assistants on the day shift to meet resident needs, and the staffing sheets show eight, the facility has violated its own standard. It convicted itself on paper.
The freedom from abuse and neglect duty — and the 2-hour reporting clock
Federal law is blunt about what a nursing home must do when a resident is harmed:
“The resident has the right to be free from abuse, neglect, misappropriation of resident property, and exploitation.”
That is 42 CFR § 483.12. And the law attaches a stopwatch to it. When an allegation involves abuse or results in serious bodily injury, the facility must report it to the state “immediately, but not later than 2 hours after the allegation is made.” For allegations that do not involve abuse or serious bodily injury, the window is 24 hours. A facility that investigates itself instead of picking up the phone to the state has committed a second violation — the reporting failure — stacked on top of the underlying harm.
The reporting clock matters in this case because the Comptroller’s report describes conditions that persisted for five years. If incidents of abuse, neglect, or serious injury were occurring and not being reported within the required windows, each unreported incident is its own federal violation. The gap between the incident time and the report time — or the absence of any report at all — is evidence that the facility chose concealment over compliance.
The resident-rights records duty — your 24-hour weapon
Federal law gives you — the resident, or the resident’s representative — a powerful tool that most families do not know exists. Under 42 CFR § 483.10(g)(2), a facility must provide access to a resident’s personal and medical records “upon an oral or written request” within 24 hours, excluding weekends and holidays. Copies must be provided after two working days’ advance notice. This is not a favor the facility grants. It is a federal right. And in a case where evidence preservation is urgent, this 24-hour records right is the first lever to pull — before the facility’s own retention schedule allows records to be destroyed, before call bell logs are overwritten, before the chart that would prove the missed medications or the unanswered calls quietly disappears.
Who Really Owns These Facilities — and Why the $92 Million Matters to Your Case
The Comptroller’s report names the owners: Daryl Hagler and Kenneth Rozenberg. They are not absentee landlords. According to the investigation, they received $134 million in Medicaid funding for patient care at the two facilities and funneled $92 million to themselves. That is roughly 69 cents of every Medicaid dollar going to the owners rather than to the residents whose care the money was meant to fund.
This matters to your case in three specific ways.
First, it establishes intentional conduct — not negligence. Punitive damages in New Jersey are available when a defendant acts with intentional or reckless disregard for the rights and safety of others. The Comptroller’s finding of intentional understaffing, combined with the documented diversion of $92 million, is not circumstantial evidence of conscious disregard. It is a government-validated finding of it. The argument is straightforward: the owners knew that understaffing would harm residents, they did it anyway, and they profited from it. That is the punitive-damages engine.
Second, it opens the ownership stack. Nursing homes are frequently structured as a deliberate stack of entities — a licensed operating company that holds the license and almost no assets, a separate property company that owns the building, a management company that sets the staffing budget, and the individual owners or a private-equity parent at the top who pulled the cash out. The operating company is often engineered to be judgment-proof. The assets sit one or two entities over. The $92 million diversion is exactly the kind of evidence that supports piercing the corporate structure to reach the entities and individuals who actually controlled the money. Federal law already requires nursing homes to disclose their full ownership structure — including any entity that exercises operational, financial, or managerial control, any entity that owns 5 percent or more of the real property, and any management or consulting company — to Medicare. That ownership map is a public record. It is the roadmap to every entity that should be named in a lawsuit.
Third, it supports a consumer-fraud theory. New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act is one of the strongest in the country. Accepting $134 million in Medicaid funding for patient care while diverting $92 million to the owners — and representing to families and to the state that adequate care was being provided — may constitute a knowing violation of consumer-protection statutes. If proven, the Consumer Fraud Act can support treble damages and an award of attorney fees. That is a separate and powerful financial lever on top of the negligence and wrongful-death claims.
The Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now — and What Must Be Done About It
Every nursing home neglect case is an evidence-preservation emergency. This one is worse than most, because the investigation window spans five years and some of the most critical records are already on the edge of their legal retention limits.
Call bell system logs
The call bell system in a nursing home is an electronic record. Every time a resident presses the button, the system logs the time. Every time a staff member responds and cancels the call, the system logs that too. The gap between those two timestamps is the proof of how long your loved one waited. In a facility where the Comptroller found call bells going unanswered, those logs are the objective, timestamped, electronic proof of neglect.
But call bell systems are typically designed to overwrite their data on a rolling cycle — often 30 to 90 days, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Every day that passes without a preservation demand is a day closer to those logs being gone forever. This is one of the fastest-dying records in any nursing home case.
Surveillance and CCTV footage
Most nursing homes have cameras in common areas, hallways, and entrances. In a case involving alleged sexual assaults, hallway footage may show who entered a resident’s room and when. In a case involving unanswered call bells, footage may show the absence of staff on the floor. CCTV systems typically overwrite on 7-to-30-day cycles. If your loved one was at the facility at a specific date range, a preservation letter specifying those dates must go out immediately.
Medication administration records (MARs)
The MAR is the document where staff record every medication given to every resident, at every scheduled time, with the signature of the person who administered it. Gaps in the MAR — missing initials, missing doses, notations of “refused” when the resident was never offered the medication — are the proof of missed medications. The Comptroller specifically identified missed medications as one of the harms at these facilities. MARs are retained per state regulation and facility policy, but they can be altered, back-dated, or purged. A litigation hold freezes them.
Staffing schedules, time records, and payroll data
The single most important document in an understaffing case is the staffing sheet — the record of how many nurses and aides were actually on the floor on the shift your loved one was harmed. Federal law requires facilities to post daily nurse-staffing data and to retain those posted records for a minimum of 18 months. But the deeper record — the actual payroll data, the punch-in and punch-out times, the agency-staffing invoices — is what proves the gap between what was needed and what was provided. CMS also collects Payroll-Based Journal data from every facility — auditable, payroll-backed staffing data submitted quarterly. That data is archived by CMS and is not easily destroyed, but it must be pulled and analyzed by someone who knows what to look for.
Incident and accident reports
For the two residents who were allegedly sexually assaulted and for the resident who died, the facility’s own incident reports, internal investigations, and 911/police-call records are critical. These reports may be subject to privilege claims by the facility’s lawyers, but the privilege is not absolute, and a preservation demand must be issued before the reports are “lost” or “cannot be located.” The 3,400 police calls to the two facilities over five years are a separate, independent record held by the Hammonton Police Department and the Deptford Police Department — obtainable through New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA), but subject to the departments’ own retention schedules.
The Comptroller’s underlying exhibits
The publicly released report is the summary. The underlying exhibits — witness statements, financial records, staffing analyses, inspection findings — are the raw material. A formal OPRA request to the Comptroller’s office for the underlying exhibits should be filed as early as possible. Some may be exempt from disclosure, but the request itself establishes the timeline and the demand.
What we do about it — the preservation letter
The preservation letter — also called a spoliation letter or a litigation-hold letter — is the document that tells the facility and every related entity: do not destroy any records. It names the specific records by category. It cites the federal regulations that require their retention. It puts the facility on notice that destruction after receipt of the letter is not routine records management — it is spoliation of evidence, and a court can instruct a jury to assume the destroyed records would have been unfavorable to the facility. In a case where the state has already found intentional misconduct, a facility that destroys records after receiving a preservation demand is adding to its own exposure.
The preservation letter goes out the day you call. Not after the case is filed. Not after the medical records are reviewed. The day you call. Because the call bell logs and the CCTV footage do not wait for the legal process. They overwrite themselves on a schedule, and that schedule does not care about your grief.
New Jersey’s Statute of Limitations — Why Some Claims May Already Be Dying
This is the section that matters most to the family reading at 2 a.m. who is wondering whether it is too late to do anything.
New Jersey applies a two-year statute of limitations to personal injury claims, wrongful death claims, and claims under the New Jersey Nursing Home Care Act. The clock generally starts running on the date the injury occurred — or, under New Jersey’s discovery rule, on the date the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known that an injury had occurred and that it was caused by the conduct of another party.
For residents harmed at these facilities during the 2019-2024 investigation window, the two-year clock has already expired for many incidents. A fall in 2019, a missed medication in 2020, a pressure ulcer in 2021 — under a strict accrual analysis, the deadline to file may have passed. But the discovery rule is not a technicality. It is a legal doctrine that recognizes a fundamental reality: you cannot sue for harm you did not know was caused by someone else’s wrongdoing. If a family believed their mother’s bedsore was an unfortunate complication of her health conditions — and only learned, on December 10, 2025, from the Comptroller’s report, that the facility was intentionally understaffed and the bedsore was the foreseeable result of a corporate policy — the argument that the clock started on December 10, 2025, is a real argument. Whether it succeeds depends on the specific facts of each resident’s case, and no lawyer can promise an outcome on a statute-of-limitations question without reviewing those facts.
What we can tell you, plainly, is this: if your loved one was at either facility and was harmed, and you have not spoken to a lawyer, the safest assumption is that the clock is running and that every day matters. Some claims from the early years of the investigation window may already be barred. Some may be saved by the discovery rule. Some — for incidents in 2023 and 2024 — are still squarely within the window. But the only way to know where your family stands is to have the specific dates and the specific harms reviewed by a lawyer who handles New Jersey nursing home cases.
The Affidavit of Merit trap
New Jersey has a requirement that catches out-of-state lawyers and general practitioners alike. For any claim that sounds in professional negligence — and missed medications, failure to assess, failure to turn and reposition, and failure to supervise are all claims that can be characterized as professional negligence — New Jersey requires an Affidavit of Merit from an appropriately licensed professional. The affidavit must be served within 60 days of the filing of the defendant’s answer. Failure to serve it results in dismissal with prejudice. That means the case is over. Not postponed. Over.
This is not a formality. It means that from the day a lawsuit is filed, the clock is ticking on retaining a qualified expert — a geriatric nurse practitioner, a nursing home administrator, or a physician — who is willing to review the records and sign an affidavit stating that the care fell below the professional standard. We identify the expert early. We do not wait until the answer is filed to start looking.
What a Case Like This Is Worth — An Honest Valuation
We are not going to tell you your case is worth a specific number, because no lawyer can honestly do that before reviewing the medical records, the staffing data, and the specific facts of what happened to your loved one. What we can do is give you the framework that experienced nursing home litigation lawyers use to evaluate these cases, and the ranges that comparable cases have produced.
Individual systemic neglect claims — for a resident who experienced soiled diapers, missed medications, unanswered call bells, unsanitary conditions, or preventable pressure ulcers, but who survived — the range is approximately $500,000 to $3,000,000 per resident, depending on the severity and duration of the harm, the documentation, and the strength of the causation evidence. A Stage 4 pressure ulcer that progressed to sepsis is at the top of that range. Unanswered call bells and missed meals, without a documented physical injury, are at the lower end.
Individual sexual assault claims — for the two residents who were allegedly sexually assaulted — the range is approximately $3,000,000 to $12,000,000, given the egregiousness of the harm, the vulnerability of the victims, and the facility’s liability for failing to protect residents in a knowingly understaffed environment. These claims require psychiatric expert testimony, life-care planning for trauma-related treatment, and a full presentation of the facility’s failure to supervise. The PTSD and trauma dimensions of sexual assault in a vulnerable adult are severe and long-lasting.
Individual wrongful death claims — for the resident who died during the investigation period — the range is approximately $2,000,000 to $8,000,000, depending on the strength of the causation evidence linking the death to the understaffing or neglect. New Jersey’s Wrongful Death Act limits recovery to pecuniary loss to beneficiaries — the financial support and services the decedent would have provided — while the survival action preserves the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering. The survival claim is often the larger component in a nursing home death case, because the conscious pain and suffering of a resident who lay in a soiled bed for hours, who developed a wound that rotted to the bone, who called for help that never came, is profound and documentable.
Punitive damages — the $92 million diversion is the engine here. New Jersey’s Punitive Damages Act permits punitive awards for intentional or reckless conduct. The Comptroller’s finding of intentional understaffing and $92 million in self-dealing is not a close call on the conscious-disregard standard. This was a documented corporate policy of prioritizing owner enrichment over resident safety. The punitive exposure is what makes these cases different from ordinary negligence — and it is what the $92 million figure establishes.
Aggregate mass-tort value — across all affected residents over the five-year period, the aggregate exposure to the facilities and their owners is estimated at $25,000,000 to $75,000,000 or more, driven by the volume of victims, the documented intentional conduct, and the deep-pocket evidence of the diverted funds. The state’s own $124 million repayment demand operates independently of private tort recovery and signals the severity of the financial misconduct.
The consumer-fraud multiplier — if the consumer-fraud theory succeeds, treble damages and attorney fees are available on top of the tort recovery. That is not a prediction. It is a statutory mechanism that applies when a defendant’s conduct meets the Consumer Fraud Act’s standards, and the diversion of $92 million in Medicaid funds while representing that care was being provided is a theory worth pursuing.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The ranges above are analytical frameworks based on comparable cases and the specific findings of the Comptroller’s report, not promises.
The Insurance Company’s Playbook — and How Each Play Is Countered
When a nursing home faces a claim — especially one backed by a state investigation — the facility’s insurance carrier and defense lawyers do not fold. They run a playbook. Knowing the plays in advance is how you keep them from working.
Play 1: “The resident’s underlying condition caused the harm.”
The defense will argue that your mother was elderly, frail, diabetic, on multiple medications, and that the bedsore, the fall, the infection, the decline — all of it was the natural progression of her health conditions, not the result of understaffing. This is the eggshell-plaintiff issue in reverse. The law takes the victim as it finds them. A resident with diabetes is more susceptible to pressure ulcers — which means the facility had a heightened duty to turn her, to assess her skin, to provide the care her condition required. The defense says “she was fragile.” The answer is “yes — and that is exactly why federal law required them to staff sufficiently for her needs, and they chose not to.”
Play 2: “We met federal minimum staffing standards.”
The defense will point to the federal RN requirement — eight hours a day, seven days a week — and argue that the facility was in compliance. The answer is twofold. First, the federal “sufficient staffing” duty at 42 CFR § 483.35(a) is not a minimum — it is a requirement to staff to the level each resident’s care plan demands. The facility’s own assessment, required by 42 CFR § 483.71, establishes what “sufficient” means for its resident population. If the actual staffing fell below the facility’s own assessed needs, the facility violated its own standard. Second, the Comptroller found the understaffing was intentional. Meeting a bare regulatory minimum while deliberately running below the level your own residents need is not compliance. It is a calculated risk with someone else’s mother.
Play 3: “The family did not visit often enough.”
This is the cruelest play in the book, and it works on juries who do not understand what a nursing home’s duties are. The defense will suggest that if the family had visited more, the neglect would have been caught earlier. The answer is that the duty to provide adequate care, staffing, supervision, hygiene, medication administration, and dignity rests entirely on the facility. The family’s visiting frequency is not a substitute for the facility’s federal obligations. A family that visits every day and a family that visits once a week are entitled to the same standard of care — because the standard is set by law, not by the family’s schedule. And in this case, the Comptroller found that the conditions were systemic and intentional — which means more frequent visits would not have changed a corporate policy designed to understaff.
Play 4: The quick settlement with a release.
The facility’s carrier may offer a settlement early — before the medical records have been fully reviewed, before the staffing data has been analyzed, before the full scope of the harm is understood. The offer comes with a release that, once signed, extinguishes every claim the family has, including claims they did not yet know existed. The answer is: never sign a release before the records are reviewed and the full scope of harm is understood. An early offer is not generosity. It is a financial decision by an insurer who has calculated that paying less now is cheaper than paying more later — after the family has a lawyer who has pulled the staffing sheets and the call bell logs and the MARs and traced the $92 million.
Play 5: “The investigation is just allegations.”
The defense will argue that the Comptroller’s report contains allegations, not adjudicated findings of liability. This is technically true — a government investigation is not a court judgment. But it is also true that the report represents the conclusion of a five-year investigation by an agency with subpoena power and access to financial records that no private plaintiff could obtain without litigation. The report is admissible as evidence of the facility’s conduct, and it provides a roadmap that would otherwise take years of discovery to build. The “just allegations” argument is a defense lawyer’s hope that the jury will discount the government’s work. It is not a legal barrier to recovery.
For more on how to handle the insurance company’s tactics, what you should not say to an insurance adjuster is critical viewing — the wrong words to the wrong person can undermine your case before it begins.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a nursing home neglect case is built — from the first phone call to the number at the end. This is what we do. This is the process.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out. The day you call, a litigation-hold letter goes to the facility, to the management company, to the owners’ holding entities, and to any third-party contractors (pharmacy, therapy, staffing agency). The letter names every category of record — call bell logs, CCTV, MARs, staffing sheets, payroll data, incident reports, care plans, MDS assessments, physician orders, wound-care documentation, the facility assessment, the PBJ submissions, and all financial records related to the $92 million diversion. OPRA requests go to the Comptroller’s office, the New Jersey Department of Health, and the local police departments for all records related to the two facilities.
Weeks two through four: Records collection and the 24-hour federal records demand. Under 42 CFR § 483.10(g)(2), we invoke the resident’s federal right to access medical and personal records within 24 hours. The complete chart — every assessment, every care plan, every nursing note, every MAR, every incident report, every physician order — is requested in writing. The family requests photographs of any wounds, any conditions, any visible signs of neglect. If the loved one is still at the facility, arrangements are made for transfer to a safe environment and for an independent medical evaluation.
Months one through three: Expert review and the Affidavit of Merit. A certified geriatric nurse practitioner reviews the chart and provides a standard-of-care opinion. A nursing home administration expert reviews the staffing data against the facility assessment and the residents’ care plans. If the claim includes a professional-negligence component — missed medications, failure to assess, failure to treat — an Affidavit of Merit is prepared and served within the statutory window. For the sexual assault claims, a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist evaluates the trauma. For the wrongful death claim, a physician reviews the causation chain linking the death to the neglect.
Months three through six: Financial discovery and the ownership map. The CMS ownership disclosure data is pulled. The Medicare cost reports (Form CMS-2540) are obtained and analyzed for related-party transactions — rent paid to a commonly-owned property company, management fees paid to a commonly-owned management company, consulting fees that move money from the operating entity to the owners. The $92 million diversion is traced. The forensic accountant identifies every entity that received money and every individual who authorized the transfer. This is where the shell game is dismantled.
Months six through twelve: Depositions. The administrator is deposed on the staffing budget. The director of nursing is deposed on the care plans and the staffing levels. The owners — Hagler and Rozenberg — are deposed on the $92 million. The corporate representative is deposed on the facility assessment and the gap between assessed needs and actual staffing. The staff members who were on the floor during the incidents are deposed on what they saw and what they were told. Every deposition is under oath. Every answer is sworn.
The number at the end. The number is built from all of it — the medical expenses, the pain and suffering, the loss of dignity, the wrongful death pecuniary losses, the survival action conscious pain and suffering, the punitive damages supported by the $92 million, and the consumer-fraud treble damages if the theory holds. It is not a round number picked from the air. It is a calculated figure built from a life-care plan, a forensic economist’s present-value calculation, the staffing data, the financial records, and the Comptroller’s findings. That number is what the demand is built on, what mediation is built on, and what a jury hears if the case does not settle.
The First Steps — What to Do Right Now
If your loved one is still at either facility, the first priority is safety. Get them evaluated by an independent physician. Document the conditions — photograph the room, the bed, the bathroom, any visible wounds, any signs of poor hygiene. Request the complete medical record in writing, citing the federal 24-hour records right. Begin the process of transferring to a facility with adequate staffing and a clean inspection record.
If your loved one has passed away, request the complete medical record and the death certificate. If the cause of death is listed as a condition that may have been caused or worsened by neglect — sepsis, a pressure ulcer, a fall, malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, failure to thrive — the causation question is the central one, and it requires medical expert review.
If your loved one was at the facility during the investigation window and you suspect they were harmed — whether by a bedsore, a fall, a missed medication, an untreated infection, or any other event — write down everything you remember. Dates. Names of staff. What you saw when you visited. What your loved one told you. What complaints you made and to whom. That timeline is the skeleton of your case.
Do not sign anything from the facility or its insurance company. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not post about the case on social media. Do not assume that the Comptroller’s report means the case is already handled — the state’s investigation and $124 million repayment demand are separate from your family’s right to private tort recovery. They do not pay your family. Your family’s claim is yours to pursue, and the deadline to pursue it is governed by the statute of limitations, not by the investigation.
Call us. The consultation is free. The call costs nothing. The conversation is confidential.
Who We Are
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We take catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases in New Jersey, working with local counsel where required. We are a trial firm, not a settlement mill. We are built for the fight that happens when a corporation has chosen profit over people and a family is left to reckon with the consequences.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner — 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, a journalist before he was a lawyer, a competitor who hates losing. He has spent his career representing people against corporations and institutions that failed them.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney and a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm — in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the other side values a case, how they pick their medical experts, how they use surveillance and social media, and how they time their settlement offers to land before the family has a lawyer. He uses that knowledge for injured clients now. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations without an interpreter.
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 call is free. The answer to “can I afford this” is yes — because you do not pay us anything out of pocket. We front the costs of the case — the records requests, the expert fees, the filing fees, the depositions — and those costs are repaid from the recovery, not from your savings account. For a full explanation, how contingency fees work walks through the math.
We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients over our firm’s history. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the record tells you something about who we are and what we are built to do.
Hablamos Español.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the nursing home if my loved one was at Hammonton or Deptford during the investigation period?
Yes — if your loved one was a resident at either facility between 2019 and 2024 and suffered harm from neglect, understaffing, missed medications, preventable injuries, or abuse, you may have a claim under New Jersey’s Nursing Home Care Act, common-law negligence, and potentially the Consumer Fraud Act. The Nursing Home Care Act provides a private right of action for residents whose statutory rights to adequate care, dignity, and safety were violated. The Comptroller’s findings map directly onto those statutory rights. Whether your specific claim is still within the statute of limitations depends on when the harm occurred and when you discovered — or should have discovered — that it was caused by the facility’s conduct.
Is it too late to file a claim if the neglect happened in 2019 or 2020?
It may be — but it may not be. New Jersey has a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury, wrongful death, and Nursing Home Care Act claims. Under a strict accrual analysis, a claim from 2019 would have expired in 2021. However, New Jersey recognizes a discovery rule: the clock may not start until the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known that the injury was caused by the wrongful conduct of another. If you only learned from the Comptroller’s December 2025 report that the neglect was intentional and systemic — not just bad luck or your loved one’s underlying condition — the discovery-rule argument may extend your deadline. This is fact-specific and requires immediate legal review. Do not assume it is too late. Do not assume it is not. Call and find out.
What if my loved one is still at one of these facilities right now?
Get them out. The Comptroller’s report describes ongoing conditions, and a family member of a current Deptford resident has publicly described conditions that have not improved. Contact an independent physician for an evaluation. Document everything — photograph the room, the bed, any visible wounds, the condition of the bathroom. Request the complete medical record in writing, citing the federal right to records within 24 hours under 42 CFR § 483.10(g)(2). Then call us. The transfer, the independent medical evaluation, and the records request are the three most urgent steps.
What if my loved one died at one of these facilities?
If your loved one died during the investigation period and the cause of death was or may have been related to neglect — sepsis from a pressure ulcer, a fall from inadequate supervision, an untreated infection, malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration, or any condition that adequate staffing would have prevented — you may have a wrongful death claim and a survival action. New Jersey’s Wrongful Death Act provides recovery for pecuniary loss to beneficiaries. The survival action preserves the decedent’s pre-death conscious pain and suffering. The causation question — linking the death to the neglect rather than to the resident’s underlying disease — is the central medical question, and it requires expert review. For more on the wrongful death process, see our wrongful death claim practice page.
Does the Comptroller’s report mean the state is already handling my family’s case?
No. The Comptroller’s investigation and the $124 million repayment demand are government enforcement actions — they are separate from your family’s private right to sue for damages. The state is seeking repayment of Medicaid funds and sanctions against the facilities. The state is not pursuing a personal injury or wrongful death claim on behalf of your family. The $124 million, if recovered, goes to the state — not to the residents or their families. Your family’s claim for medical expenses, pain and suffering, loss of dignity, punitive damages, and wrongful death is yours to pursue separately. The Comptroller’s report is powerful evidence in your private case, but it does not replace it.
What if the staff were also victims of the understaffing?
Many of the frontline workers at these facilities were themselves doing an impossible job — too many residents, too few aides, not enough supplies, no backup. The Comptroller’s report places responsibility on the owners and the corporate policy, not on the individual aides and nurses who were stretched beyond capacity. In a lawsuit, the defendant is the facility, the management company, and the owners who set the staffing budget — not the certified nursing assistant who was covering forty residents alone. Individual staff members who committed assault or intentional harm are a separate category of defendant, but the systemic neglect claims are directed at the corporate decision-makers.
How long does a nursing home neglect case take?
A case built on the Comptroller’s findings can move more quickly than an ordinary neglect case because the government has already established the pattern of intentional understaffing and the financial diversion. But “more quickly” in litigation terms still means months to years. The preservation letters go out immediately. Records collection takes weeks to months. Expert review takes months. Discovery — depositions, document production, written interrogatories — takes six months to a year. Mediation may follow, and if the case does not settle, trial preparation adds more time. Cases involving a single resident with clear harm and strong documentation may resolve in six to twelve months. Cases involving the full ownership structure, the $92 million, and punitive damages may take longer because the stakes are higher and the defense is more aggressive.
Can I afford to hire a lawyer for this?
Yes. We work on contingency. There is no hourly fee. There is no retainer. There is no out-of-pocket cost to you. We front the costs of the case — records, experts, filings, depositions — and those costs are repaid from the recovery. If there is no recovery, you do not owe us attorney fees. The consultation is free. The first call is free. You can afford to call. The question is whether you can afford not to — while the call bell logs overwrite themselves and the statute of limitations runs.
What damages are available in a New Jersey nursing home neglect case?
Economic damages include past and future medical expenses for conditions worsened by neglect, the cost of emergency transfer to a safer facility, and any rehabilitation or specialized treatment necessitated by the facility’s failures. Non-economic damages include physical pain, emotional distress, loss of dignity, humiliation, and the psychological trauma of unanswered calls and unsanitary conditions. New Jersey does not impose a general cap on non-economic damages in nursing home negligence cases. Punitive damages are available for intentional or reckless conduct — and the Comptroller’s finding of intentional understaffing and $92 million in self-dealing is the kind of evidence that supports a punitive claim. The Consumer Fraud Act may add treble damages and attorney fees if the diversion theory is proven.
What should I do right now, tonight, before I call a lawyer?
Write down everything. Your loved one’s name. The facility. The dates of residence. Every incident you remember — the fall, the bedsore, the missed medication, the infection, the time you visited and found your mother in a soiled bed, the time you pushed the call bell and nobody came. The names of any staff you remember. Any complaints you made and to whom. Any response you received. Photograph any visible injuries or conditions if your loved one is still at the facility. Do not sign anything. Do not give a recorded statement to the facility’s insurer. Do not post on social media. Then call.
The Call
The number is 1-888-ATTY-911 — that is 1-888-288-9911. The call is free. The consultation is free. The conversation is confidential. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service, live staff. We serve families in English and in Spanish. We take cases in New Jersey, working with local counsel where required.
The call bell logs are overwriting themselves tonight. The CCTV footage is cycling. The staffing sheets are sitting in a binder that someone may eventually clean out. The statute of limitations is running. The Comptroller did the hard work of proving the pattern. The remaining work — preserving the evidence, building the case, and fighting for your family — is what we do.
Call us. Or call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we win your case.
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.