Stripper case proceeds

A New York nursing home has lost its bid to have a stripper-related claim against it dismissed from legal proceedings.

As Long-Term Living reported in April in one of our most popular stories of the year, the family of an 85-year-old nursing home resident had filed a lawsuit against the facility, maintaining that the woman was the victim of “disgraceful sexual perversion” after attending against her will a show by a male stripper who visited the home at the behest of its 16-member residents’ committee.

The son of Bernice Youngblood, a resident at East Neck Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in West Babylon, New York, had learned of the September 2012 incident when he visited his mother and found a photograph of her placing money in the dancer’s waistband. Family members were seeking unspecified damages in the lawsuit. Their attorney reportedly said the resident has “partial dementia.”

Earlier this year, an attorney representing the facility reportedly said that the nursing home decided to pay the stripper’s $250 fee because its residents’ committee had requested the activity..

A judge said the complaint could proceed because "triable issues" existed related to the case, the New York Law Journal reported Dec. 16. The judge also said that “a claim for conversion” could be brought against the facility, the publication reported, because money from the resident’s commissary account was used to help pay for the stripper. The judge, however, “dismissed the emotional distress causes of action brought by her son…because he was not present at the event,” according to the law journal.

An attorney representing the nursing home maintains that the activity was “consensual.”

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