Families sue Country Villa Assisted Living in Pulaski over COVID-19 deaths of 4 residents
PULASKI - The estates of four people who died after contracting the coronavirus in a Brown County assisted-living facility in 2020 have sued the facility and its insurance carriers.
They say Country Villa Assisted Living in Pulaski failed to adequately protect them from the COVID-19 that killed them that spring.
Conditions at the facility were so dire in late April and early May 2020 that roughly 28 of 36 residents tested positive for COVID-19, a lawyer for the plaintiffs wrote in a complaint filed last week in Brown County Circuit Court. So did 18 of 27 staff members.
Randolph "Randy" Wichlacz, the former Pulaski Tri-County fire chief, died less than two weeks after testing positive for the virus, his family's attorney said.
The lawsuit seeks actual and punitive damages for Wichlacz's illness and death, but does not seek a specific dollar amount.
Wichlacz "required hospitalization and/or extensive treatment, suffered a loss of dignity, severe pain, suffering, mental anguish, (and) emotional distress," according to a 40-page summons and complaint filed by Katherine Metzger. She is a Milwaukee attorney representing Kimberly McGrath, Wichlacz's daughter and administrator of his estate.
Metzger also represents family members of three other former Country Villa Pulaski residents who died of COVID-19 in 2020: Marian Marks, her husband, Norbert Marks, and June Martineau. Each of the three has filed suit alleging negligence on the part of Country Villa Pulaski. They seek unspecified amounts for actual and punitive damages. Those three lawsuits include similar allegations to those in the Wichlacz case.
Marian and Norbert Marks had been married for 69 years. Norbert Marks died May 15, 2020. Marian, 87, died almost six weeks later.
The deaths took place during the first few months of the pandemic when case numbers were climbing in Brown County. Meatpacking plants in Green Bay showed inordinately high numbers of people getting sick with the virus. Country Villa in Pulaski, where most of the roughly three dozen patients are elderly, appeared to be the first facility in the county to report a double-digit number of deaths.
The lawsuits were filed Feb. 8 in the Brown County Clerk of Circuit Court's office. The cases were assigned to four of the eight judges who work in the county.
The Press-Gazette was unable to reach County Villa owner Chad Reader for an interview.
RELATED: State report says 10 residents died with COVID-19 at Country Villa Assisted Living in Pulaski
RELATED: Former Pulaski Fire Chief Randy Wichlacz dies from coronavirus after getting sick in assisted-living facility
State regulators had first looked into Country Villa when eight deaths had been linked to the facility.
The regulators found 10 residents at Country Villa died in an outbreak that infected 46 people; the state fined the facility up to $7,600 for violations. Reader told the Green Bay Press-Gazette in 2020 that Country Villa had addressed the state's concerns.
But the problems unearthed in 2020 included a round of finger-pointing by staff and regulators. Management and staff struggled to keep the facility "staffed up," which sometimes meant that workers said they were pressured to work when ill, or becoming ill.
Country Villa was barred from admitting new residents until the violations were corrected.
In the interview in 2020, Reader said the facility moved quickly to adapt to changing state and federal health guidelines.
The state Division of Quality Assurance, which did not disclose the names or genders of people in its report, had determined "a lack of health monitoring" allowed residents to contract COVID-19.
The 10 deaths accounted for more than one-fourth of the 39 Brown County fatalities that were then linked to the coronavirus at the time.
State regulators found "discrepancies" in where caregivers should have documented symptoms, which allowed a resident's high fever to go unmonitored, according to the report in 2020.
The facility also waited several days to address a resident's low blood sugar. That resident died from COVID-19 complications a week after arriving at the hospital.
Multiple caregivers said their supervisors asked them to come in after they disclosed their positive COVID-19 results, according to the report. Employees shared similar stories with the Press-Gazette at the time.
In 2020, Reader called the allegations "completely false," saying the facility sent home anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 and didn't ask them to work.
Country Villa also did not suspend communal dining and group activities despite recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aimed at helping long-term care facilities prevent the virus' spread, the survey said. The Pulaski facility used social distancing and limited the number of residents in dining and community rooms, but did not require them to eat in their rooms until someone tested positive.
Once the virus took hold, employees had limited access to N95 masks, gowns and other personal protective equipment, according to the report.
Contact Doug Schneider at (920) 431-8333, or DSchneid@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PGDougSchneider.
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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Pulaski families file lawsuit after COVID-19 killed relatives
