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N.J. nursing home where 17 bodies were found in makeshift morgue hit with class-action lawsuit

The New York Daily News - 9/9/2020

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against a New Jersey nursing home where police found 17 bodies piled in a makeshift morgue during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

The lawsuit accuses Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center, which operates two facilities in Sussex County, of not taking proper precautions to protect its residents against COVID-19 and failing to notify the families of the people whose bodies were stuffed in a small room back in April.

“It has been widely reported that, at or around that time, many family members and other authorized representatives of residents were unable to get in contact with staff or other personnel of the Facilities; in many cases, family members went multiple weeks without receiving any update as to the status of their loved ones,” the lawsuit alleges.

New Jersey resident Brian Roberts filed the complaint Tuesday in Sussex County Superior Court on behalf of his uncle, who was a resident of the nursing home and died on April 1 after getting infected with coronavirus.

Roberts said his family relied on Andover’s repeated representations over the years that its facilities in Lafayette Township were “high quality and regulatory-compliant.”

“Were it not for the representations made by the Defendants that Roberts and the Decedent relied upon, they would not have chosen the Facilities,” his lawyers wrote in the suit.

Court records suggest that as many as 94 Andover residents and patients have died from the virus.

The lawsuit also cites an April 21 inspection that reportedly found that one of the two facilities was “not following infection control safety practices and guidance recommended” by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies during the pandemic.

The complaint names both facilities, numerous employees, several business entities involved with the nursing home and its owners, Louis Schwartz and Chaim Scheinbaum.

Roberts accuses the group of violating the consumer fraud act as well as state and federal nursing home laws. He also asked the court to recognize all Andover residents as a class in the lawsuit.

A representative for the nursing home could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning, but an attorney for Scheinbaum told NBC News this week that the facilities did take COVID-19 seriously.

“We monitored and complied with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines,” the statement reads. “Despite all our efforts, the virus made its way into our facility, as it did in the majority of long-term care facilities across New Jersey. We took every possible step to handle this crisis internally while simultaneously making dozens of outreaches to local, state, and federal agencies for help.”

The complaint further accuses the nursing home of engaging in “deceptive, misleading and unconscionable commercial practices” through false advertising and other practices.

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