Judge endorses $12.5 million settlement for Bob Dean's evacuated nursing home patients

A Jefferson Parish judge approved a class-action settlement Monday for the 843 patients of seven south Louisiana nursing homes that Bob Dean evacuated for Hurricane Ida last year with fatal results.

24th Judicial District Judge Michael Mentz approved the all-or-nothing settlement after a two-day court hearing last week over the opposition of the Morris Bart law firm and other objectors on behalf of scores of Dean's evacuated patients or their families.

Bart and others opposed to the settlement argued that lawyers for the class were trying to ram it through without a full accounting of Dean's assets, which include properties from Oregon to Maine.

The deal that Mentz approved Monday calls for those patients to receive about $12.5 million in insurance funds over the botched evacuation, attorneys said last week in court. Mentz also approved class attorneys fees of 22.5%, below what is common.

After costs that include the work of a special master who will decide on the payouts, the average is likely to fall below $10,000 for each of the 843 patients who arrived to a cramped warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish where conditions quickly deteriorated.

From afar, Dean ignored staff pleas for help and browbeat state health inspectors who were trying to intervene, records show. More than a dozen residents died in the evacuation's aftermath, though coroners have classified only five of those deaths as "storm-related."

Settlement approved as Dean faces criminal charges

The settlement means that Dean, 69, has managed to avoid sworn testimony over his actions before, during and after the evacuation.

State health officials, to whom Dean submitted evacuation plans, shut down his homes a week after the storm, and lenders have since seized them. Dean's lawyers have argued that he is broke and suffers from dementia. A Georgia probate judge in September granted a petition to appoint his wife as his guardian.

In the meantime, Dean faces criminal charges in multiple states. Attorney General Jeff Landry's office booked him in June on eight counts of cruelty to the infirm, five counts of Medicaid fraud and two counts of obstruction of justice. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Dean's criminal situation was among several factors that Mentz cited for his decision to approve the settlement. But the approval focused mostly on his dim assessment of Dean's finances.

Mentz rejected the testimony of experts last week for the objectors who argued that Dean still appeared to have some equity in the nursing homes, the Independence warehouse property and other assets, including various insurance funds, unrelated to his seven shuttered homes.

The judge found the testimony of Bart's primary witness, commercial real estate broker Barry Spizer, "not to be reliable, well-founded and not reflective of the actual facts," he said Monday.

Mentz said he took into account the ability of the entities controlled by Dean to pay; Dean's own personal debt, which includes about $40 million in loan guarantees; and what he described as the cost of delay.

"When all is said and done, this court has been confronted with essentially a lose-lose-lose situation," the judge said.

"Mr. Dean has debt that far, far exceeds his assets, and the residents, unfortunately some have even lost their lives as a result of the actions of those entities," he said. "And they've all lost their ability to be fully compensated for the damages that they suffered from a terrible situation."

One attorney vows appeal

Outside the courthouse in Gretna, Bart vowed to appeal Monday's ruling, maintaining there's evidence of $15 million to $20 million in "seizeable" assets that the settlement swears off.

Bart said Mentz's ruling, if it stands, "allows Bob Dean to walk away without paying one dollar for what he did."

H. Minor Pipes, Dean's attorney in the civil cases related to the evacuation, dismissed the idea that Dean is shielding assets.

"Obviously he's not in a situation where he's benefitting off this in any way," Pipes said. "He's lost everything."

Attorney Anthony Irpino, who advocated for the settlement, cited further costs beyond the attorneys' fees that will eat away at the final amount. Among them are costs for the special master, investigations and experts, and costs for the hearing last week that Irpino suggested should come from Bart's firm.

Don Massey, who argued last week for approval of the deal, insisted that the class attorneys have "looked tirelessly for evidence of any assets of Bob Dean and they didn't have any…It's what's available. It's all we could get."

Massey said lawyers have estimated that between 100 and 200 of Dean's evacuated patients have since died.

He said he hoped the plaintiffs receive checks by year's end.