Understaffed Nursing Home Pays $3.5 Million After a Lone Aide Rolled a Two-Person-Care Resident Out of Bed and Broke Her Femur

For four years a 69-year-old woman lived at a North Carolina nursing home as a total care resident. She could not bathe, dress, turn, or move herself. Her care plan was specific on one point: every time staff repositioned her or moved her in or out of bed, two people had to do it together.

On the day she was hurt, the facility did not have the staff to follow that plan. A single certified nursing assistant went in to care for her alone. Working without the second person the plan required, the aide rolled her out of the bed. The fall broke her femur, the long bone of the thigh and one of the strongest in the body. A femur fracture in someone her age is a serious injury on its own. Staff put her back in bed, where she stayed in pain for three days before the facility sent her to a hospital.

Doctors treated the fracture without surgery. She was transferred to a different nursing home, where she lived about 18 months before she died.

Her case went to Carma Henson, Thomas Henson, and Anna Claire Turpin of Henson Fuerst in Raleigh. They framed the injury as the predictable result of how the facility was run, not a single careless moment. The complaint alleged "systematic and ongoing administrative and managerial corporate failures that led to a culture of abuse and neglect," and pointed to staffing levels that left one aide doing a job the resident's own plan said required two.

The plaintiff's position was that the broken femur traced back to a "system-wide failure to implement appropriate measures to protect this resident, and others, from neglect and abuse." The understaffing was not treated as an excuse for the aide but as evidence against the company that set the schedule.

The defendants agreed to pay $3.5 million. The settlement was reached on June 28, 2025. The facility, its corporate owner, and the county were kept confidential. Because the parties resolved the claim by agreement, there was no jury verdict and nothing for an appeals court to reduce. North Carolina Lawyers Weekly reported the result in its verdicts and settlements coverage.