Hypothermia Death of 100-Year-Old Mildred Hernandez Outside a Sacramento Assisted Living Facility — Attorney911 Holds the Operating Company, Asset Manager and Corporate Owner Accountable for Elopement Neglect of Dementia Residents, We Pull the Care Plans, Wander-Alarm Logs and Overnight Staffing Schedules Before They Are Revised, California’s Elder Abuse Act Provides Enhanced Remedies Including Punitive Damages When Recklessness Is Proven by Clear and Convincing Evidence and Non-Economic Damages Remain Uncapped for Residential Care Facilities, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Values These Deaths, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911
Sacramento Assisted Living Elopement Death: The $110 Million Verdict and What It Means for California Families You placed your mother in an assisted living facility because you could not keep her safe at home anymore. That decision — the hardest one a family makes — was supposed to buy safety. A locked building. Trained staff. Someone watching. A 100-year-old woman named Mildred Hernandez had that same promise made to her family at Greenhaven Estates in Sacramento’s Greenhaven Pocket neighborhood, and on a February morning in 2019, she was found unresponsive outside the facility in 38-degree air. She died of hypothermia. She had Alzheimer’s dementia. She had been a resident for more than five years. The people who were paid to watch her did not know she was gone until the early morning cold had already done its work. A Sacramento County jury awarded her family $110 million. That number is not a rounding error or a runaway jury — it is the convergence of a California legal framework that treats elder neglect differently from ordinary negligence, a damages system that does not cap what a jury can award against an assisted living facility, and a set of corporate defendants whose…