WHY NO CALLS OR VISITS?

For 19 years, Lovera Staples lived at the Ridgeview Nursing Home in Chicago.   Her daughter Mary lives in Chicago and her two sons, Sylvester and Roy, live in Lansing, (southern suburb of Chicago) and Valparaiso, IN. respectfully.  All three are located in towns close enough to Chicago so one of them might at least visit occasionally.  They did not live in some foreign country that might make phone calls and visiting prohibitively expensive.  

Lovera died in May 2010.  It was not until her daughter tried calling her FOUR MONTHS later on her Mom’s birthday on September 11, 2010 that she was told her Mother was not there.  So the siblings decided to visit on September 13^th, TWO DAYS LATER, to find out about their missing Mom.  An administrator told them that she had died FOUR MONTHS earlier.

In a suit filed last week in Cook County Circuit Court, the family is suing the nursing home for emotional distress and is seeking more than $50,000.  In my opinion, the children were neglectful and have no claims against Ridgeview. They are taking advantage of the nursing home’s clerical error to try to gain a windfall. If they had any emotional distress about their Mother’s well being, they should have called or visited while she was still alive.

According to the Sun-Times, “Mary Staples, of Chicago, claims she visited her mother at the nursing home April 25, 2010. A nursing home employee called her two days later to report her mother was in the hospital, and Mary Staples visited her mother at Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston April 29, 2010. The woman was released from the hospital and returned to the nursing home the following day, according to the suit.”

So if Mary Staples was capable of visiting her Mother in the hospital on April 29^th, how come it took FOUR MONTHS for her to contact her Mother again?  Why weren’t the brothers calling or visiting in that FOUR MONTH period?

Imagine the Mother’s emotional distress for not hearing from her children for FOUR MONTHS?  But she is dead, so she can’t sue them.  An old Yiddish joke defines Chutzpah as when a child murders their parents and then throws themselves on the mercy of the court because they are an orphan.  The Staples siblings’ lawsuit takes chutzpah to a whole new level.