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Jury Awards $1.1 Million In Nursing Home Wrongful Death Case; Family Criticized For Choosing 'Right To Die' By Defense Attorneys A Bibb County, Georgia, jury awarded the family of James Davis $1.16 million in compensatory damages on Thursday after he died in September 2002 from an infection stemming from falls and negligent care at North Macon Health Care Nursing Home in Macon, Georgia. The family chose to let their loved one die with dignity instead of undergoing an amputation and putting in a permanent feeding tube, a decision defense attorneys criticized during the trial. Davis was a 62-year-old stroke victim with a paralyzed right side who was confined to a motorized wheelchair. He fell nine times during his one-year stay at the nursing home. One fall from a wheelchair fractured his right hip and required hip replacement surgery. One June 1, 2002, less than a month after the hip replacement surgery, he fell again. This time he fell out of his bed, which did not have its side rails up. The fall split open his hip at the surgical wound site where it became infected. Court testimony showed the staff did not follow hospital orders to clean the wound for four days and he became infected with his own urine and feces. Surgery to treat the infection was unsuccessful. As a result, Mr. Davis developed severe circulation problems in his leg and the doctors offered an option of amputation from the hip down, along with a permanent feeding tube. Doctors also recommended the patient and family consider only comfort care. His family decided against the surgery, making a "comfort only" or hospice care decision. "The quality of my father's life vastly deteriorated and would have become worse," said Scott Davis, the man's son. Since Mr. Davis did not have a living will, Scott made the painful decision to let his father die with as much dignity as possible. "This was the more humane option instead of undergoing more operations that would rob him of his dignity, leave him on a feeding tube and an amputated leg," he said. "The defense attorneys attacked my client in court for making this very difficult decision," said Tom Edwards, co-counsel and partner at Peek, Cobb & Edwards, P.A. in Jacksonville. "They came back and second guessed this family's painful decision after the fact. The people who caused Mr. Davis' injuries literally accused the doctors and Mr. Davis' son of killing Mr. Davis by not having the amputation at the hip and for not surgically implanting a permanent feeding tube; it's despicable," he said. "After the Schiavo battle in the courts last year, it is ironic that a care giver, potentially responsible for the injuries that forced desperate measures -- like a permanent feeding tube and an amputation at the hip -- would have standing to attack the doctors and family confronted with these difficult medical decisions," Edwards said. "This kind of defense tactic by a nursing home, vested with the care and responsibility of the sick and disabled, is a frightening trend in an individual's right to make their own medical decisions." It is a trend attorneys are seeing more of in the courtroom. "Nursing homes defend cases of neglect by first blaming the patient for being ill or disabled. They then blame the patient's family, and even his physicians, for having to make difficult decisions brought on by the nursing home's neglect," said co-counsel Jim Ford, a partner at Ford & Barnhart, LLC in Atlanta. "Questioning this family's choice of the right to die as a defense tactic signals a new, disturbing trend that's happening in the defense of nursing homes. It further underscores the need for all of us to get a living will, but a living will is not going to stop the nursing home from arguing that a Do Not Resuscitate order was the cause of death," Ford said. Mr. Davis died at a South Carolina nursing home in September 2002. North Macon Health Care Properties, Inc is one of several dozen nursing homes controlled by the Pruitt Corportaion and its subsidiary, UniHealth Solutions, Inc, both Georgia-based companies.