#Deadly NYC nursing homes hit with lawsuits from grieving families

When Janice Esposito’s husband showed symptoms of the coronavirus while at a Queens nursing home, she frantically called the facility’s doctor. What he said shocked her.

“I’m working from home this week,” Esposito recalls the Parker Jewish Institute doctor telling her.

She said the doctor did not see her 67-year-old husband, Louis, until five days later. By that time he was so sick he was immediately sent to the hospital.

Louis, her high school sweetheart and husband of 43 years, died within a week. The Hollis Hills resident tearfully recalls his last words before he was sedated and put on a ventilator.

“I want to live,” he said.

Now Esposito is suing the home, one of the deadliest in the state during the pandemic with 82 fatalities. But that count does not include Louis Esposito, a grandfather of two who had just retired, and an untold number of other residents who died in the hospital. Official death tolls only count patients who died inside the nursing home.

“It just wasn’t right,” Esposito said. “It wasn’t right what they did what to my husband.”

Distraught loved ones are forging ahead with legal actions against nursing homes despite a law signed by Gov. Cuomo that largely shields them from lawsuits related to COVID-19.

But claims of gross negligence can still go forward, which is what Esposito’s suit, filed Monday in Queens Supreme Court, alleges. Her husband entered the nursing home on March 4 to recover from a leg wound.

It was so-short staffed during the pandemic that a physical therapist delivered his meals, the widow said.

“The nursing home industry has sort of acted like this was this big surprise,” said Thomas Gallivan, a lawyer with the Duffy & Duffy firm on Long Island representing Esposito. “There were warnings specifically about covid as early as January. On top of that, there were federal and state regulations for infection control protocols to be in place for years.”

The family of Rosa Shapnik, 85, a resident of the Hebrew Home in Riverdale, is also claiming gross negligence in a lawsuit filed last month in Bronx Supreme Court.

“Rosa was left untreated, undiagnosed and severely dehydrated, which led to her untimely, wrongful death,” said lawyer Nova Damouni with the Rosemarie Arnold firm in Fort Lee, N.J.

Shapnik, who had Alzheimer’s disease, had been at the home since 2012. She died on April 11 after being found unresponsive and brought to the hospital, according to the suit.

“Our family begged the nursing home to take her to a hospital but they refused. Instead they gave her experimental medication for COVID-19 when they hadn’t even tested her for it,” said her daughter-in-law Bella Shapnik, referring to hydroxychloroquine.

The Hebrew Home said as of May 8 it had 63 covid-related deaths, but would not specify whether those were just at home or among residents taken to the hospital as well. The nursing home revised its death toll upward after The Post reported that 119 residents had died at the home in a two-month period, many with suspected COVID-19 symptoms.

The Isabella Geriatric Center in Northern Manhattan said 98 residents of the facility had died as of April 29 — 60 at the home and 38 in the hospital.

Among them was 72-year-old Elba Pabey, a mom of three and grandmother of eight, whose daughter is now suing.

“This was a place I trusted. This was a place that I thought was prepared,” Haydee Pabey said.

The lawsuit, filed July 2 in Manhattan, alleges the nursing home “failed to timely and properly isolate residents known to be infected with COVID-19, including residents … on Elba Pabey’s floor.”

Haydee Pabey, an NYPD detective, said she drives by Isabella when she goes to work and says to the building, ‘Mom, I love you.’ ”

“Once you lose five you should know to get your act together. You have to do something,” Pabey said. “But they’ve lost more than 100 people. I just don’t understand.”

Representatives from all three nursing homes declined to comment on the suits.