N.S. Government Will Be Named In Proposed Northwood Lawsuit
HALIFAX — Families suing the company that runs the Northwood long-term care facility will extend their legal action to include the Nova Scotia government.
On June 23, the law firm handling the proposed class-action lawsuit filed a “notice of intended action” against the provincial government.
The notice does not mean the provincial government has been officially added to the class-action lawsuit. Rather, it’s a legally required advanced notice of the plaintiffs’ intent to do so at a later date.
In the notice, Wagner’s Law Firm alleges the provincial government’s negligence “caused or contributed to the unsafe operation of Northwood Halifax, leading to the deaths of 53 residents throughout April and May of 2020.”
The statement alleges the province created an environment where Covid-19 could easily spread throughout Northwood by failing to enforce safety, health, and sanitation regulations at the facility.
Northwood’s Halifax campus was the epicenter of Nova Scotia’s Covid-19 outbreak, accounting for 84 percent of all Covid-related deaths in the province.
RELATED: Families Of 53 Northwood Residents Who Died File Class-Action Lawsuit
Families of Northwood residents who died during the Covid-19 outbreak began their legal challenge June 1, with a “statement of claim” against the company that runs Northwood: Northwoodcare Group Inc.
Ray Wagner, the lawyer spearheading the effort, said at the time Northwood management didn’t take the appropriate steps to protect its residents.
“There is a host of things they did do and a host of things that they didn’t do that led to this outbreak,” he said.
The proposed lawsuit claims residents weren’t properly separated, were forced to share bathrooms and common rooms with no restrictions and weren’t tested aggressively enough. It also claims the facility didn’t provide appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) and didn’t properly limit visitors to the facility.
“Despite the vulnerability of Residents, Northwood Halifax continued to operate the Long-Term Care Facility in a manner ideal for the spread of an infectious disease,” the statement of claim reads.
Wagner told Huddle on June 2 that Northwood is responsible for its own behavior, but if the government had enough involvement with operational decisions at the facility it makes sense to include it in the lawsuit.
“We don’t needlessly sue people unless we feel that there’s a really clear path to a successful conclusion,” Wagner said.
The province has not yet commented on being included in the legal action against Northwood.
However, during a June 2 press briefing Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, said the province did a lot of work with Northwood to build a Covid-19-specific outbreak protocol.
Dr. Strang wasn’t commenting on the lawsuit specifically but said the province “had a very robust process in place building on the longstanding work we’ve done with long-term care facilities in general around outbreak management.”