Holyoke Soldiers' Home Lawsuit Settles For $56 Million

HOLYOKE, MA — On Thursday Gov. Charlie Baker revealed that Massachusetts reached a $56 million settlement with families in the Holyoke Soldiers' Home COVID-19 outbreak that killed 76 veterans in the spring of 2020.

In addition to the 76 deaths, 84 veterans and more than 80 staff members at the facility contracted the coronavirus.

"The COVID-19 outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home was a terrible tragedy," Baker said in a statement. "While we know nothing can bring back those who were lost, we hope that this settlement brings a sense of closure to the loved ones of the veterans."

The terms of the settlement will cover veterans who lived at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home at any point between March 1, 2020 and June 23, 2020, who became ill, or cover the estates of a soldier who died from COVID-19 during that period.

Holyoke Soldiers' Home workers also filed a class-action suit alleging they were forced to care for sick and dying veterans in "inhumane conditions."

The agreement is subject to approval by the federal district court for Massachusetts. The state appointed former U.S. Attorney Donald K. Stern to serve as the settlement claims administrator and will make awards to participating claimants based on individual circumstances.

Estates of deceased veterans would receive a minimum award of $400,000 and veterans who contracted COVID-19 but survived would receive a minimum of $10,000, the state said. The fund will also cover the payments of court-approved attorneys' fees for the plaintiffs.

In June of 2020, Baker launched an investigation into the coronavirus outbreak at the Holyoke Soliders' Home and found "substantial errors" in decisions made by leaders at the long-term care facility.

According to the report, the Holyoke facility was hit especially hard at the beginning of the outbreak due to "utterly baffling" infection control procedures made by top officials at the facility.

The worst error came on March 27, when facility leaders combined two dementia units, mixing patients who had tested positive for coronavirus with ones who had not, according to the report. The decision to combine the dementia units was made due to a staff shortage; however, the facility's leaders should have sent the patients to local hospitals, the report says.

"Rather than isolating those with the disease from those who were asymptomatic — a basic tenet of infection control — the consolidation of these two units resulted in more than 40 veterans crowded into a space designed to hold 25," the report says.

Since the report, Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former Medical Director Dr. David Clinton were facing 1o felony counts each, brought on by Attorney General Maura Healey, but those charges were dropped by a judge in 2021, saying there was a lack of evidence that their actions led to the deaths.

The report concludes that the coronavirus likely would have infected and killed some residents even if better precautions had been taken. But the errors made were so severe that the coronavirus outbreak was much worse than it should've been, according to the report.