Lawsuit Says Brookdale Senior Living 'Scheme' Defrauds Residents, Families

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A Florida woman, through her legal guardian Adult Advocacy & Representation, has filed a proposed class action lawsuit that claims defendant Brookdale Senior Living, Inc. runs a scheme through its purported “Resident Assessment System” to defraud seniors, individuals with disabilities, and their families.

The 39-page lawsuit describes the defendant as the largest owner of assisted living facilities in the United States. In its marketing materials and online, Brookdale allegedly promotes its “detailed” resident assessment program as a system to help identify both the level of care residents may need and as a way of purportedly ensuring it provides “individually tailored” staff to suit its seniors’ needs. According to the plaintiff, Brookdale’s resident assessment program is merely a façade to conceal its true motives:

“In fact, Brookdale does not receive or use its Resident Assessments to determine or provide facility staffing budgets at the corporate level. Instead, Resident Assessments are retained by the facilities, and as a matter of corporate policy and standard operating procedure, Brookdale staffs its assisted living facilities based on labor budgets and profit goals determined at the corporate level, and also prohibits its facilities from making staffing decisions themselves to meet the assessed needs of their resident populations. As a result, Brookdale fails to staff its facilities in a manner sufficient to meet the assessed needs of its residents. [The defendant] does not disclose and affirmatively conceals these crucial material facts from residents (including the plaintiff), their family members and the consuming public.”

The plaintiff and her legal counsel allege later in the complaint that had she known that Brookdale effectively ignores its own resident assessment system to determine and provide staff, she would not have agreed to live at the facility—nor paid significant amounts of money in new resident fees and monthly rent.

The complaint notes that since 2015, Brookdale has “been the subject off at least nine formal administrative actions” brought by Florida’s assisted living regulatory agency over issues pertaining to staffing deficiencies.