Too often seniors are victims of financial fraud or negligent nursing home care that can lead to degrading conditions, injury, or even death. Regulatory agencies often lack the financial resources to adequately protect seniors’ safety. In many cases, only the civil justice system can hold nursing home operators accountable for meeting state minimum requirements. And when harm or death occurs, only the civil justice system can provide some measure of compensation for victims and their families.
 
Fighting Against Senior Financial Abuse and Fraud
Financial scams against elders continue to devastate our seniors and their families, and too often those tasked with protecting elders are turning a blind eye while scammers rob older Californians of their life savings. As mandated reporters, care custodians, investment advisers, banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions are well positioned to detect when an elder might be the victim of a scam or other financial abuse – and take action to protect elders from the devastating loss of their life savings. California law lacks meaningful enforcement mechanisms for holding wrongdoers accountable for assisting in the financial exploitation of elderly Californians. The California Legislature should ensure seniors have accountability mechanisms when they are defrauded and that mandated reporters have sufficient incentives to deter such abuse.
 
Strengthening Our Laws to Prevent Physical Abuse, Neglect and Abandonment
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of elders in California are abused every year. However, for every abuse reported, research has found that at least five others go unreported, making the actual number of abused people much higher that the reported rate. Studies show that neglect and abuse of nursing home residents have reached epidemic proportions. A report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that at least 91% of nursing homes have been cited for health and safety deficiencies. Yet many residents who suffer neglect and abuse find it virtually impossible to seek justice in court. Current legal and evidentiary hurdles make physical elder abuse claims very difficult to prove in California.

The burden of proof required under the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act (EADACPA) leaves seniors with the seemingly impossible task of proving by “clear and convincing” evidence that the defendant is not only liable for the physical abuse, but that the defendant is also guilty of recklessness, oppression, fraud, or malice. Most other tort actions need only be proven by a “preponderance” of the evidence. Unfortunately, most of the elderly victims in these cases are very ill, suffer from dementia, or are otherwise severely disabled and thus may be unable to testify as to the specific facts of the abuse or neglect they suffered. In many cases, the victim is already deceased by the time the case is filed on their behalf. California must correct this injustice and impose the same standard of proof on physical elder abuse cases as most other tort actions.

Our Impact
CAOC successfully passed legislation in 2025 to ensure that when a nursing home operator intentionally destroys evidence (spoliation), they can be held accountable, by permitting a judge to apply the lower evidentiary standard in those cases.

Nursing home operator Skilled Healthcare was among the most notorious of scofflaws, routinely violating the state's rules for staffing that were put in place to ensure the elderly receive the care they deserve in their golden years. Consumer attorneys challenged in court, and a jury in Humboldt County delivered a harsh message, finding Skilled Healthcare liable for repeat violations. The consumer attorneys of California sent a message to nursing home operators around the nation: don't put profits over the lives of aging adults.
 
Another big problem faced by many nursing home residents is caused by the lack of staff on hand when facilities fail to meet state-mandated minimums. Call lights go unanswered; soiled diapers go unchanged; patients aren’t turned as needed in their beds, all of which can quickly lead to deadly pressure sores. Regulatory agencies can issue citations for inadequate staffing, but those penalties are a mere slap on the wrist for multi-million-dollar, for-profit nursing home chains. That’s when our civil justice system can help. In 2021 we worked with Attorney General Rob Bonta and Assemblymember Eloise Gomez Reyes to pass a law providing residents of skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities with stronger enforcement rights when pursuing legal action for violations under California’s Health and Safety Code.

Our Impact
When consumer attorneys in Humboldt County won a verdict holding one nursing home chain accountable for failing to provide minimum staffing on more than 500 days, they insisted the company boost staffing and pay for a court-appointed monitor to ensure compliance. The civil justice system accomplished what state regulators could not: making California’s system of long-term care safer for seniors.

The wildfires in California showed us another example of how residential care facilities lack necessary emergency preparedness response criteria, as some facilities abandoned their seniors during emergency evacuations. For example, in 2018 the Department of Social Services placed two large assisted living facilities in Santa Rosa on probation after investigations found that they abandoned large numbers of residents during a firestorm. At least 20 frail, elderly residents would have died had family members and emergency responders not arrived to rescue them before one of the facilities burned to the ground. This is simply unacceptable.

• Reporting resources from CDSS regarding reporting to Adult Protective Services
• California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform
• California Low-Income Consumer Coalition
• SB 278 Fact Sheet
• CAOC, CLICC and Elder Law & Advocacy- Capitol Staff Briefing
• Elder Abuse Capitol Staff Briefing Powerpoints