Hilton Head nursing home paying $400K to settle lawsuit alleging deadly medication mixup
A Hilton Head Island nursing home will pay a $400,000 settlement to the wife of a deceased patient after she sued the facility in 2022, claiming the staff’s negligence — and a mistake in medication dosage — led to her husband’s death.
Attorneys for the Life Care Center of Hilton Head agreed to the settlement but denied any wrongdoing in the patient’s death, according to a settlement approval document filed March 11 in Beaufort County court. The sum included just around $125,000 in attorney and litigation fees.
Mary Roerty filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the nursing home in September 2022 after her husband, Gerard Roerty, died at age 77 at the Hilton Head Hospital on Aug. 15, 2020. He had been admitted to the Life Care Center in late July after he contracted sepsis from a urinary tract infection but was transferred to the hospital two days before his death “due to a change in his condition and medical decline,” according to the court summons.
During Gerard Roerty’s stay at the Life Care Center, the lawsuit alleged, he was given 90 milligrams of fluoxetine daily instead of weekly as prescribed. The high dosage interacted with his heart medication and caused “an overdose of medication,” according to an affidavit signed by registered nurse Luanna Trahant that was filed alongside the lawsuit.
Commonly available in the form of Prozac, fluoxetine is an antidepressant with side effects including nausea, dizziness, shaking and flu-like symptom. The maximum recommended dose of the drug is 80 milligrams per day.
Roerty’s autopsy also revealed bleeding in his scalp and fractures to five of his fibs, court documents claimed, although nursing home staff had not informed his family that he had been injured and failed to document any falls within the facility.
Records from the Life Care Center indicated Roerty “suffered from deteriorating mental status” during his two-week stay at the nursing home, Trahant added in her sworn affidavit.
The lawsuit named facility manager Fritz Oehler and Life Care Centers of America, one of the country’s largest elderly care companies. Headquartered in Tennessee, the company operates the Hilton Head’s Life Care Center and about 200 other nursing facilities across 29 states.
Located behind the Hilton Head Medical Center, the Life Care Center of Hilton Head has about 90 beds for inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation.
Roerty was born in New Jersey in 1943 and received his Master’s degree from Xavier University. He was commissioned into the U.S. Army and was stationed at the Pentagon, later starting a 30-year career at Procter and Gamble, according to his obituary.
Lawyers for the Life Care Center of Hilton Head and Mary Roerty did not respond to a request for comment.
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 9:20 AM.
