We previously discussed the possibility of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo committing a crime when he made the unbelievable decision to send COVID-19 patients to nursing homes (Should Governor Cuomo Be Charged With Murder?). An estimated 15,000 New Yorkers died in nursing homes before May 10, 2020, when Cuomo reversed his crazy decision and after examining New York State Law, we have to wonder if anyone is holding him accountable?
One man appears to be trying.
Daniel Arbeeny’s father was in a nursing home that was forced to take in COVID patients due to Cuomo’s reckless order. According to LifeNews, Arbeeny has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Cuomo. His father died after catching COVID-19 in a Brooklyn nursing home and now Arbeeny is behind a class action lawsuit against the former governor.
The lawsuit, filed in a Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday states, “This policy of mandatory admission, non-testing and comingling of nursing home residents constituted reckless endangerment by all of the Defendants.”
Norman Arbeeny was a Korean War Veteran and died in April 2020, after he developed coronavirus symptoms during his stay at the Cobble Hill Health Center, a Brooklyn nursing home, the suit states.
The lawsuit continues, “Through other regulatory actions. Defendants Cuomo and other New York State Health Officials rendered it near impossible [for] those facilities to be available for COVID-19 patients.”
State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli recently released the findings of his audit into the nursing home death count during the Cuomo administration and found that Cuomo’s administration failed to report 4,000 additional nursing home deaths to COVID-19.
In early 2020, Cuomo received wide-spread praise in the mainstream media for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it was soon discovered that the governor ordered nursing homes to receive COVID-positive patients, meaning people with the virus were placed together with those most likely to die from it.
Eventually, evidence began to surface that state health officials under the Cuomo administration failed to report all of the nursing home deaths to the public – which DiNapoli’s audit again confirmed.
“Families have a right to know if their loved one’s COVID-19 death was counted, but many still don’t have answers from the state Department of Health,” DiNapoli said. “Our audit findings are extremely troubling. The public was misled by those at the highest level of state government through distortion and suppression of the facts when New Yorkers deserved the truth.”
According to the audit, Cuomo health officials also lagged on nursing home inspections in the spring of 2020, inspecting 20 percent of facilities when most other states had inspected 90 percent within the same period.
DiNapoli concluded the audit by asking Governor Kathy Hochul to provide answers to the families whose loved ones died during that time.
“An important step would be for [the state health department] to provide the families who lost loved ones with answers as to the actual number of nursing homes residents who died,” he said. “These families are still grieving, and they deserve no less.”
Considering Andrew Cuomo has the same political affiliation with the leaders in New York, we doubt anyone will ever investigate his actions as criminal but civil lawsuits do not require government officials to do what is right.
We grieve the loss of Norman Arbeeny and the countless of our most vulnerable citizens that did not deserve what Andrew Cuomo is alleged to have enabled.
