In 2026, a Sacramento County jury awarded $110 million to the family of Mildred Hernandez, a 100-year-old Alzheimer’s patient who wandered outside her assisted living facility through an unsecured area, was found injured in 38-degree weather, and died at the hospital. The facility, Greenhaven Estates, had documented that Hernandez was a known elopement risk. The evidence at trial showed a long history of operational failures and safety deficiencies known to the facility’s corporate owners — including private equity firm Formation Capital — and resulted in a verdict that includes punitive damages.
The Hernandez verdict is the largest elopement-related verdict in California history, and it follows a pattern that should be instructive for attorneys handling memory care cases nationally. This is not a case where liability was close. It is a case where the plaintiff established that a vulnerable, high-risk resident was predictably harmed because a facility and its corporate owners prioritized cost over safety — and the jury responded with a verdict that reflects exactly that finding.
As I noted in an earlier article on elopement litigation, these cases are among the most defensible in long-term care when the facility has done its job — and among the most indefensible when it has not. The legal framework is clear. CMS Condition of Participation 42 CFR §483.25(n) requires facilities to ensure adequate supervision to prevent accidents. The 2023 updated CMS guidance specifically identifies elopement as a foreseeable risk requiring individualized assessment and environmental safeguards.
What the Hernandez case adds to the liability landscape:
Corporate owner exposure. Evidence that Formation Capital and the facility’s REIT co-owner had knowledge of systemic operational failures — and continued operating under those conditions — opened the door to punitive damages. This is the corporate negligence theory applied at its broadest: not just what the facility failed to do, but what the ownership structure enabled and ignored. Attorneys in these cases should be looking far upstream from the nursing floor.
The “known risk” anchor. Hernandez was documented as a known elopement risk. That single fact is often sufficient to establish the first element of negligence — the facility knew or should have known the risk existed. From there, the inquiry becomes whether the safeguards were adequate, operational, and monitored. When the answer to all three is no, the liability arc is steep.
Environmental failure versus human failure. Defense counsel in elopement cases frequently attempt to frame the event as a momentary lapse in supervision — a human error in an otherwise adequate system. The Hernandez verdict reflects a jury that was not persuaded. When the physical environment is compromised (unsecured access points), when documentation of safety checks is absent or falsified, and when the corporate record shows prior citations for the same issues, the “momentary lapse” framing falls apart.
Punitive damages in institutional cases. California’s Elder Abuse Act provides a specific statutory basis for punitive damages in long-term care cases involving recklessness or oppression by the entity. Other states have analogous frameworks. The $110 million verdict signals that California juries are willing to use punitive damages as a genuine deterrent when the evidence shows corporate indifference to resident safety, not just individual negligence.
The Hernandez case will almost certainly be appealed, and the final number may change. But the liability theory it validates — that corporate owners of assisted living and memory care facilities can be held directly liable for systemic safety failures that result in a resident’s death — is not going away.
References
- Expert Institute. “Top California Medical Malpractice Verdicts & Settlements of 2026.” May 4, 2026.
- Nursing Home Abuse Center. “2026 California Nursing Home Lawsuit.” 2026.
- 42 CFR §483.25(n). Requirements for Long-Term Care Facilities: Accidents. CMS. Updated 2023.
- California Welfare & Institutions Code §15657. Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act.
