In a jaw-dropping turn of events, the family of a woman who was mistakenly declared dead and spent two hours zipped up in a body bag is taking legal action against a nursing home. According to court documents, the incident unfolded at Water’s Edge Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Port Jefferson, Long Island.
The suit filed in Suffolk County Supreme Court reveals that Janet Balducci was pronounced deceased by a nurse at the facility in February 2023. What happened next was straight out of a movie—she was placed in a body bag and sent off to be embalmed, but, astonishingly, she was not dead.
When the 82-year-old arrived at the Casimir Funeral Home in Miller Place, New York, an employee discovered that she was still very much alive. “An employee opened the bag to discover Balducci was ‘still breathing and had a pulse,’” family lawyer Peter DeNoto revealed to The New York Post.
Following this shocking discovery, the funeral home staff quickly called 911, and Balducci was rushed to the hospital. “She survived for another day but ultimately passed,” DeNoto told the outlet.
Her sons, Robert and Joseph Balducci, are suing both the nursing home and the funeral home, accusing them of negligence and wrongful death. While a hefty financial compensation might be on their minds, the Balduccis are primarily driven by a desperate need for answers regarding how their mother ended up in a body bag while still breathing.
“Did the nurse follow the criteria for determining whether somebody is dead, and did a doctor confirm what the nurse found?” DeNoto posed, indicating the key questions the family seeks to answer.
DeNoto also pointed out that the case sheds light on a broader issue of neglect in long-term care facilities. “There really is no excuse for putting a live person in a body bag and sending them to a facility for embalming,” he stated.
“There was nobody there advocating for her as an elderly person. She was definitely at the end stages of her life, unfortunately. That happens to all of us. But here it seems that it was too easy to say she is not alive anymore let’s send her to a facility,” he lamented.
Balducci had been a resident at Water’s Edge since September 2022. The lawsuit accuses the caretakers of not only prematurely declaring her deceased but also contributing to her death by failing to diagnose or properly treat her deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
“It really is a sad case. The end game is to send a message that you have to take your job seriously and you have to treat human beings with dignity and respect,” DeNoto concluded in his discussion with the New York Post.