Lawsuits filed for victims of deadly LaSalle veterans home COVID outbreak
Richard Cieski for years received care at the veterans home in downstate LaSalle that his family recalled as “amazing.” The 89-year-old decorated Korean War Army veteran schmoozed with friends, participated in an array of activities and excelled in an environment even as he coped with escalating dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
“They had church. They had animals that came in. They had coffee and conversation. They had haircuts. Physical therapy. Everything. He was clean. His hair was combed. He had his room and it was clean,” a granddaughter, Lindsay Lamb of Lockport, said. “He was thriving in there until it happened.”
That was in November 2020, when the COVID-19 coronavirus began to sweep through the state-run, long-term-care facility for veterans. As the coronavirus ran its deadly course through the LaSalle veterans home, the outbreak led to the deaths of Cieski and 35 other veterans.
“Six of the men ate lunch with my dad and his whole table died. There’s no one left that ate lunch with my dad. They all died within a week of each other,” said one of his daughters, Leslie Lamb of Seneca. “It could have been prevented if protocol was followed.”
The deaths have prompted a series of individual lawsuits against the state on behalf of the families of 26 veterans who died of COVID-19 or coronavirus-related illnesses. The lawsuits, which began being filed last week in LaSalle County, allege negligence and wrongful death and could cost the state millions of dollars.
The suits, being filed by the Chicago-based law firm of Levin & Perconti, come nearly a year after the Illinois Department of Human Services’ inspector general detailed systemic mismanagement from top leadership of the Illinois Veterans’ Affairs Department all the way down to the LaSalle home’s administrator. The result, according to the 50-page report, was an “inefficient, reactive and chaotic” response to controlling the virus.
Then-state VA Director Linda Chapa LaVia, whom Gov. J.B. Pritzker appointed to the role, “abdicated” her responsibilities and left management to a nonmedical chief of staff who let each home manage itself while he issued rules contradictory to health guidelines and failed to seek outside help as the outbreak grew, the report stated. Both Chapa LaVia and the chief of staff resigned following the outbreak.
At the LaSalle home, the report said, staff treated COVID-19 as if it were the flu. It noted a lack of planning, training and communication among staff, including improper use of protective gear, sporadic mask wearing and veterans who had tested positive for the coronavirus being placed with residents who had tested negative.
The home’s administrator, who was later fired, was described in the report as detached, while the home’s infectious control nurse was overburdened and “over his skis.”
“The state thoroughly investigated itself and basically convicted itself with the conclusion that there was rampant negligence that resulted in unnecessary deaths,” said Steve Levin, one of the attorneys filing the lawsuits. “That’s the state. The state has done our investigation and concluded that they are guilty.”
The LaSalle outbreak also carries political overtones. In his successful 2018 campaign, Pritzker made caring for veterans a key issue and assailed then-incumbent Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner for “fatal mismanagement” over a series of outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease that began in 2015 at the Quincy veterans home and left 14 veterans dead.
In discussing the COVID-19 deaths at LaSalle, Pritzker acknowledged a failure of leadership in naming Chapa LaVia, a longtime Democratic state lawmaker from Aurora, to the post. Pritzker replaced Chapa LaVia with Terry Prince, a 31-year Navy veteran with a medical background who previously oversaw veterans homes in Ohio.
Republican state Sen. Sue Rezin of Morris, whose district includes the LaSalle facility, has proposed legislation to put in place recommendations made by the Illinois auditor general’s office, which conducted a review of the outbreak at the Quincy home.
One such measure would require an immediate on-site review by state public health officials when an outbreak occurs at a veterans home. Public health officials didn’t show up at the LaSalle home until 10 days after the start of the outbreak on Nov. 1, 2020, when two residents and two staff members tested positive for COVID-19. Within a week of the first positive tests, 60 veterans and 43 staff members tested positive.
Levin said the families agreed to proceed with the lawsuit after no progress was made in preliminary talks with the state, which began at least six months ago. Each lawsuit seeks damages that are capped at $2.3 million under the state’s Court of Claims Act, while separate civil suits also seek unspecified and uncapped damages. Suits on behalf of a 27th veteran who survived COVID claims improper treatment.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Kwame Raoul said the office would not “conduct negotiations in the media.”
”We are committed to achieving a just and appropriate resolution that demonstrates respect for the families who have suffered a loss and accountability to the taxpayers of the state of Illinois,” Raoul spokeswoman Annie Thompson said.
Cieski was diagnosed with a positive COVID-19 test on Nov. 5, 2020, and family members said his condition worsened over time and by Nov. 14 they traveled to the home to say their goodbyes. Though Cieski had been prescribed morphine to ease his pain, the facility had failed to note it on his chart and didn’t have any of the drug available for him. Administrators at the home were finally forced to order morphine and gave Cieski a dose shortly before he died in the early hours of Nov. 15, his family said.
“They have all these men dying and there’s no morphine to comfort them during their last hours of not being able to breathe,” Leslie Lamb said.
Lawyers for Cieski’s estate last year filed a court of claims suit against the state, but that case has not progressed. Among the new lawsuits filed over the LaSalle deaths, attorneys have added a civil action on behalf of Cieski’s family against the state.
David Liesse of Berwyn recalled he noticed several lax COVID-19 protocols at the LaSalle home when he visited his father.
A decorated Air Force veteran of World War II and former Illinois volunteer of the year for the Special Olympics, Jerome Liesse, 95, was “mentally 100%” and discussing the news, the stock market and keeping track of his investments when, David Liesse said, he visited him on Nov. 11, 2020, Veterans Day.
Though David Liesse had to talk to his father through a window, he said the home’s staff came into his father’s room to help him with crossword puzzles, but that staffers weren’t consistently wearing masks.
“He was confined to his room. He was not allowed out of his room. He couldn’t go out for his meals or socialize with other guys,” Liesse said of his father, who was diagnosed with coronavirus two days after the Veterans Day visit. “The only way he could catch COVID was by it coming into the room.”
Three days after his father tested positive, Liesse said the home told him his father’s death was imminent and offered him a compassionate visit. He made the trip, spoke with his father and “I had closure with him.” But only later did he realize the nurse in the home’s COVID-19 section came out to the lobby to meet him in her contaminated protective clothing and put her arms around him as they walked to the room.
“I don’t know if someone didn’t give them any regulations or policies,” Liesse said. “They were very compassionate. But they really didn’t know what they were doing.”
After putting on protective gear to see his father for a final time, Liesse said he left the room and “walked through the entire veteran’s hospital in these contaminated clothes after hugging a person who was literally hours away from dying of COVID.”
Liesse said he received a call from Pritzker and Chapa LaVia after his father’s death, offering condolences. Then he read the inspector general’s report.
“Accountability,” Liesse said. “I think that’s whatever anger, frustration, disappointment I may have, it’s just do what you’re supposed to be doing. That isn’t a lot to ask, and someone has to take the blame for it and eventually the state of Illinois is going to have to man up to it.”
Mary Beth Schomas of Castle Rock, Colorado, whose father Bernard Schomas, 95, a decorated World War II Army veteran, died in December 2020 after contracting the coronavirus, said few in the LaSalle County area were cautious of COVID-19 or exercised proper mitigation techniques. She said that helped to lead to a lax system at the veterans home.
“The people didn’t understand the impact and what it could really do. I think the state could have done more to manage that — within the facility and without,” she said.
“I feel guilty because I wasn’t there to help him, so I felt I was at fault and that’s why I can’t get over this grieving so quickly,” she said. “I feel like it was my fault, but it really wasn’t my fault. The state was accountable, and it was pretty much their fault, but I still take it on. They didn’t respect these people who have done so much for them.”
Levin, who has scheduled a news conference Tuesday to discuss the lawsuits, said the state should have learned lessons from the Quincy outbreak but didn’t. In 2020, the attorney general’s office reached a $6.4 million settlement with families whose loved ones died at the Quincy home.
“The state tragically failed its veterans in Quincy, tragically failed its veterans in LaSalle,” Levin said. “This suit is brought by our clients to ensure that it doesn’t happen again while at the same time compensating them for what they’ve been through.”
