A Vietnam War veteran became a shell of himself following 11 weeks in an Exton memory care facility, lawsuit says

When Zach Yurick arrived at Morningside House of Exton on Father’s Day, he found his dad in agonizing pain, bruised all over, and with a soiled diaper.

Nicholas Yurick, 79, has been slipping into dementia over the past four years. In March, the family made the difficult decision to move him to an assisted-living facility that specializes in memory care. The Vietnam War veteran and retired police officer was still able to complete basic life tasks independently, but required a lot of supervision. His son saw the toll that the full-time care duty took on his mom, Donna Yurick, and worried that he would lose both of his parents because of the ailment.

The mother-son duo toured six facilities before choosing Morningside, Zach Yurick says. What sold him on the place was something the staffer showing him around told him: Your mom would be able to stop being his caregiver and start being his wife again.

“I was a sucker for that,” the son said. “I had this dream that we can be a family again, even though it was going to be hard.”

But that fantasy never came to fruition, according to a lawsuit the family filed this week in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas accusing the facility of reckless neglect.

Between March and June, the complaint says, Nicholas Yurick fell at least eight times and suffered unexplained injuries, which required trips to the hospital. The suit says that the man was sedated without the family’s permission, and left alone in the dark or outside the facility multiple times.

Ahead of Father’s Day, the family had enough. Donna Yurick put down a deposit for a room in a different facility, the son said. When they arrived that Sunday, Nicholas Yurick was in the worst condition they’ve ever seen.

Morningside staff said that they were unable to move him, so they allowed him to soil himself in bed, the suit says. At the family’s request, the facility called an ambulance and took Nicholas Yurick to Paoli Hospital where he was “diagnosed with a fully dislocated left hip, multiple broken ribs on his left side, dangerously low hemoglobin from dehydration,” according to the complaint.

Through the end of June, the man was moved between rehab facilities and hospitals, and underwent multiple hip reset procedures and eventually a hip surgery at Bryn Mawr Hospital. He then spent a month in rehab, and in August transferred to a different assisted-living facility where he currently resides.

Morningside House Senior Living is a woman-owned company that specializes in assisted living, memory care, short-term stays, and hospice, according to its website. It has facilities in Florida, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Larkin, Morningside’s chief operating officer, said that the company hadn’t been served the complaint yet and declined to comment.

Throughout Nicholas Yurick’s stay in Morningside’s Exton facility, his wife of 52 years visited him nearly every day, the son said. She documented his bruises, photos of which are included in the complaint.

The mother and son met with Morningside staff multiple times during his 11-week stay to discuss frequent falls and repeated dehydration, Zach Yurick said.

In copies of email messages included in the lawsuit, Morningside staff attempted to reassure Donna Yurick, following her husband’s falls as early as April, that he was in good hands.

“Yeah — not feeling it. I am SO disgusted!! This is a CYA response,” Donna Yurick wrote when forwarding to her son an email from the facility’s manager after another fall on the week leading to Father’s Day.

Greg Prosmushkin, the attorney representing the family, said that he doesn’t usually take nursing home cases. But once he heard the allegations in this case, he couldn’t decline to represent the Yuricks.

“I felt compelled to get involved because the level of neglect went far beyond the standard issues we unfortunately see all too often in long-term care settings,” Prosmushkin said.

After convincing his mother that she could no longer take care of her husband alone, Zach Yurick is riddled with guilt. The child abuse prosecutor with the Chester County District Attorney’s Office keeps asking himself if he missed warning signs when touring and researching the facilities.

Nicholas Yurick is doing better at the new facility, but he is a shell of the man he was before, his son said. He uses a wheelchair full-time and is rarely present.

“I don’t recognize the person who came out of that facility in Morningside,” Zach Yurick said.