Part 9: Threats from Nowak & Stauch

So, Renee Ramsey had suggested she would be willing to refund the $11,600 that Dad spent at Mustang Creek Estates, but she wanted us to agree that we wouldn't disparage the company. Initially, the family considered this, and Ben wrote Renee asking her to send such an agreement so the family could look it over.

The first attorney who corresponded with the family worked for Nowak & Stauch, but after a couple very brief, largely unsubstantive emails, he informed the family he'd left Nowak & Stauch.

We then received a very short email from Thomas (Tom) Stauch, partner in the firm, stating simply this:

He did not introduce himself. He did not convey any kind of empathy or sympathy for the family's loss. He just simply sent an email saying "Attached is a draft agreement."

The second sentence is an ambigously toned one. "I am hopeful we can reach an amicable resolution for your family."

On one hand, it may appear to be somewhat civil, but consider the context. He did not introduce himself, as polite, professional courtesy dictates. He simply sent a document and said, "Here it is," basically, and then his statement about hoping for an "amicable resolution" is not by any means polite, as it conveys a subtle, passive threat that there could be an "un-amicable" resolution. The use of the word "amicable" is one that turned out to be a favorite one of Mr. Stauch, but the irony is that "amicable" is not a tone that he conveyed even here in this email. The professional norm is that upon first communicating with someone, you should always introduce yourself. You should always show courtesy and respect to the person with whom you are communicating. Stauch's email showed no courtesy or respect. It was very brief and passively aggressive.

This tone was a harbinger of what was to come.

The family discussed the agreement Stauch sent, which basically said that the family could not speak to ANYONE about what had happpened. Ben said what was readily apparent: the refund was nothing but "hush money" in the mind(s) of Renee Ramsey/Mustang Creek Estates and their attorney.

So, Ben responded:

Stauch then sent this response, which contains his first open threats.

This email contains several threats as well as accusations.

First of all, his statement that we have a right to discuss our "opinions" on the situation "privately" is a loaded sentence that contains several distortions and outright misrepresentations of the laws of the United States. Here are two things very wrong about the statement:

• He characterizes our experiences as "opinions" - which is an affront right off the bat. It is a complete dismissal of the reality that what we were talking about was FACTS - events that happened. We are not talking about "Oh, I really think Avatar is an overrated movie" here, nor are we saying "Wearing masks should be mandatory during this pandemic." We are talking about real events that occured, that WE EXPERIENCED FIRSTHAND. Stauch is attempting to redefine the nature of the discussion by redefining what is REAL as a matter of opinion. Well, it's NOT. It is NOT our opinion that Mom arrived at Mustang Creek Estates able to speak clearly, fully cognizant, and unable to rest easily because of the never-ending pain in her back. It is NOT our opinion that she stopped responding to texts and stopped calling, and it is NOT our opinion that staff, when confronted with questions about her condition, dismissed everything with the claims that they were giving her pain medications. It is NOT our opinion that Rachel Suter on Monday told Jenna that she thought Mom should be evaluated for hospice. It is NOT our opinion that by January 1, Mom was severely dehydrated from lack of adequate liquid intake, to the point that her lips were blackened and crusted with dried blood, a condition that COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED OVER A COUPLE HOURS as Renee Ramsey and Rick Lee claimed! What Stauch is doing here is completely dismissing what happened to our precious mother and basically relegating it to the arena of the imagination.
• Second, he makes a point of saying we have a right to discuss these things privately, suggesting that we do not have the right to discuss them publicly. Here he is making a claim that flies in the face of our First Amendment rights, a statement that is blatantly, patently false. As an attorney, he knows better, but he is making this statement in an attempt, again, to reframe the facts and to intimidate us. The fact is, if we are not telling blatant falsehoods, then we have a right under the United States Constitution to discuss what happened whenever and wherever and to whomever we want! More on that in a moment... But suffice it to say, Stauch is doing his best to dismantle our story and intimidate us as quickly as he can.

The second statement also follows from the first, in careful wording that says nothing in the agreement would keep us from talking about what happened with authorities "who have been notified." The qualification there at the end is important, and could be easily overlooked - but what he is saying is that we can talk to authorities we already spoke to, but not to anyone else - not even other regulatory authorities, etc.

Then, in the next statement he brings up the reviews that family members left online. We published two of those in Part 7. Notice how he characterizes them:

• "inaccurate or exaggerated statements of (disputed) fact"

What is he doing with this statement?

Why do people make inaccurate or exaggerated statements?

To deceive others.

He then qualifies "fact" by parenthetically saying "disputed," which deconstructs the word "fact" and basically diminishes it to the opposite of what it means.

So then, he is basically saying we are liars.

People who make inaccurate, exaggerated statements that they claim to be true are LIARS.

Remember what Stauch said in that first, very brief e-mail?

"I am hopeful we can reach an amicable resolution for your family."

Let's take a look at the definition of the word amicable:

Well, Stauch has so far, in just a few sentences:

• Redefined our firsthand experiences and our knowledge of Mom as "opinions" rather than actual lived experiences and facts
• Denied our First Amendment rights to talk about what happened.
• Called us liars

How can he or anyone rationally call that "having a spirit of friendliness"? How can he or anyone say that there isn't "serious disagreement" there, or any kind of statements that would incite rancor?

Was Stauch talking about him being amicable or just us? The man did not even approach us with the standard professional courtesy of stating who he was or express the slightest bit of empathy or sympathy regarding the untimely death of our mother/wife, and now he's calling us liars?

How can he expect us to be "amicable" with him?

It doesn't end there. There's more in that email, as Stauch turns to threatening us.

He claims that the reviews contain statements that are not protected speech, but that is absolutely wrong. Some of the reviews did contain staff names, but there is nothing in the First Amendment prohibiting us from referring to people by name! Yes, speech can be libelous, but Stauch here does another kind of redefining. As he previously redefined our experiences as "opinions," here he assumes we are not fully aware of the definition of libel, because he implies a non-existing connection between "defamatory" and libel. In order for a statement to be libelous, it must be false. Simply being defamatory does not make a statement libelous.

Think about it. Haven't you ever read statements, whether online or even in print, where people talked about bad experiences with businesses, and they referred to people by name? The reality is there's no law that protects you from people telling the truth about you. Now, there is a principle that more well-known people are actually less protected from libel than the average Joe or Jane, but that doesn't apply here. It's not libelous of me to say that Mikayla dropped my Mom almost two feet with the hoyer lift. She goofed. She didn't know what she was doing. It happened. It's not libelous of me to say that Rachel Suter knew Mom's condition had declined drastically as early as Sunday. This woman knew very well the condition Mom was in before she moved to Mustang Creek, and she had access to the discharge reports. She spoke with Jenna on Monday and said she didn't think we were aware of how bad Mom was (well, yes, because Mom had an untreated UTI that was spreading to her brain), but instead of calling for medical care as was promised, she made the inexplicable assumption that Mom's rapid deterioration was "normal" and suggested she should be on hospice. It's not libelous to say that James didn't have his pager on his person when Ben pressed Mom's call pendant.

But note that Stauch added "arguably" before "libelous." This is because he knew that the statements were not libelous. But once again, he is counting on us being uninformed about the law and hoping he will intimidate us.

Stauch also accuses us of writing reviews under aliases, an unsubstantiated and false allegation. As mentioned in Part 6, Eric had met a woman outside Building A whose mother was a resident, and after he told her the story of what happened to Mom, she said she would be leaving a review online as well. She eventually did, and hers showed up with ours. Apparently Stauch was accusing us of writing her review!

He then wraps it all up by threatening litigation. (And, by the way, MCE has never pursued such litigation because they do not have a case.)

Once again, one has to wonder... How in the world is this email supposed to be read as "amicable"?

And how could Stauch call us all liars, threaten to sue us, and expect us not to be angry?

After what we experienced with Mom, and how we knew that the staff had been egregiously guilty of not doing their jobs, and had failed to recognize something was wrong and had explained away everything as "we are giving her pain meds," and how Rachel Suter had clearly recognized Mom was declining rapidly but failed to seek medical attention, how could he not expect us to be absolutely furious with him for suggesting we were lying and for threatening to sue us for telling the truth about how our precious mother suffered?

Ben responded to Stauch with this email.

Stauch's response?

None. Silence.

He did not - because he could not - respond with any specific examples of claims or statements of ours that Mustang Creek denied.

Eric also responded to Stauch, but he was so furious with this attorney's attitude, he was more blunt than Ben.

Eric then sent another email:

Tom did not respond to these emails with any evidence or examples of claims Mustang Creek was denying, either. He did, however, express annoyance that Eric had "lectured him" about the law. Clearly, being confronted about his own distortions regarding the law regarding libel rubbed him the wrong way. (Apparently Stauch is good at dishing out threats but isn't pleased when someone calls him on the carpet.) We'll see that in a later email.

Frustated that Stauch would not respond, Eric tried calling him. Stauch did not answer, so he left a voicemail, saying essentially what he'd said in the email. He chastised Stauch for accusing them of libel and told him he knew better, and that he was a dishonest attorney who cared only about his client and not about the horrible way they had neglected Mom's needs. But Stauch never called him back.

So, there was silence from Stauch and MCE.

After discussing all of this, and Renee Ramsey's refusal to refund Dad unless we signed a non-disparagement agreement, and Tom Stauch's offensive emails, the family decided they would consider signing an agreement containing a non-disparagement clause only if such a clause did not prohibit private discussion of what happened and if MCE compensated us all for releasing potential liability claims.

Thus, Ben sent this email to Stauch.

The redacted names are the family members - Dad and the four children/siblings. Remember, the family was initially just seeking a refund for the money Dad spent. But Renee's attitude and Tom's behavior toward us, and their collective refusal to refund Dad unless we agreed not to talk to anyone about what happened, told us that they needed to do more for the family. MCE needed to be held accountable in some way. They needed to learn that they could not do this again. They needed to reform themselves if they were to stay in business. Stop making false promises to people. Hire people with some skill and knowledge - it didn't have to be licensing necessarily. Most importantly, feed residents and give them water!

Unfortunately, but sadly, the way Tom Stauch responded was not surprising. Interestingly, though, he did not respond to the family, but only to Ben:

The dismissive attitude continues here. Stauch includes the phrase "for obvious reasons," as a slap in the face, as if it was indeed obvious why his client wouldn't agree to the terms. Once again, he's completely minimizing and trivializing what happened - how his client failed Mom.

He's also clearly annoyed by Eric's emails and voicemails about his distortions regarding libel, because he didn't even show the courtesy of including Eric on the email, just as he never returned Eric's phone calls. His statement that "I do not intend to debate you or any other member your brother [sic] concerning the law" is an unnecessary inclusion that points to his clearly being offended that Eric called him on the carpet for leveling threats against the family. Strangely, he does not seem aware that Ben himself wrote several of the online reviews and also filed a complaint with the Texas department of Health and Human Services.

But he completely dismisses, out of hand, the family's concerns, and does not leave open the possiblity of discussing a settlement that the family feels is just. He is very clearly saying, "It's my way or the highway."

He knows, too, that the family cannot get legal representation in Texas because no attorneys take on cases like this - as mentioned earlier - after the way the Texas legislature completely gutted medical malpractice laws in the state. He knows we can't do much to fight him.

Even so, Ben wrote him back, and copied all the family, bringing us back into the conversation after Tom arrogantly left out Eric and the sisters.

Response? None, of course.

It was becoming clear at this point that not only was Tom Stauch of the mind that he could keep ignoring the family's evidence and the facts and just keep "sticking to his guns" about forcing us to sign a non-disparagement agreement that only involved MCE refunding my Dad, he was also completely ignoring Eric because Eric had been blunt and less polite with him and had chastised him for distorting the First Amendment and libel laws. Eric tried calling him several times, but he never picked up the phone and never returned any calls. Indeed, in a later email (which we'll see in a minute), he even admitted to the family that he was purposefully ignoring Eric's calls.

Eric had demanded Mom's records from MCE on January 7. Over a month had passsed and MCE had not delivered those records. So Lewis sent this email on February 11.

Response?

None.

Not a word.

So, the next day, Eric wrote as well.

Reponse?

None.

Not a word.

On February 13, Stauch's assistant sent us an email (because he couldn't do it himself, apparently) with a Cease and Desist demand that (1) we not communicate with any employees of MCE, because Eric had been "profane" and "vulgar" in some of his messages to Rachel and Rick (these were shown in Part 6) and that (2) we remove our online reviews of MCE.

It was interesting that this came right after we demanded, again, the residency records MCE had on Mom. But we knew the matter of the reviews was an empty threat. A Cease and Desist letter is just a letter - it's not a court order. It doesn't come from a judge. It has no legal power whatsoever. It's simply a threat. In this case - a letter from a bullying lawfirm that didn't want us spreading the truth about what happened to Mom.

Eric wrote back:

Eric again tried calling Stauch, but once again Stauch did not answer. So he left a voicemail yet again, telling Stauch to call back but knowing he wouldn't do it. He told Stauch that we would go to the media with the story.

He wrote another email, as follows.

The family then received a short note from Stauch's assistant that the reason the residency records weren't turned over was because they had to be requested by Dad. This was baffling - why had they waited over a month to tell us this? Why did Renee Ramsey say, a month before, that they were working on getting the records ready?

And how in the world, if we didn't communicate with the staff or owners of MCE, would Dad make such a request now?

Eric wrote another email to Stauch, copying the family, pointing out that no one had said anything about Dad requesting the records, and how that didn't make any sense because he (Eric) had requested and obtained Mom's medical records from Legacy at Willow Bend and Medical City Frisco. It sounded like an excuse.

He also told Stauch that he was going to find a way to get the story to 60 Minutes. "Try to stop me," he said.

Then Stauch emailed him privately - so that other family members wouldn't see:

This was perhaps the worst email Stauch wrote. Let's look at it.

• "There is simply no story here." Indeed? Here, as before, Stauch is completely dismissing the reality of what happened to Mom. Not once was he ever able to point to ANYTHING we said as being false. He NEVER countered any claim, never provided any evidence - never even referred to specific things that MCE or he was objecting to as being inaccurate. He has simply rejected the entire experience wholesale as a fabrication. There is no story in an assisted living facility that made false promises to a family needing a safe place for their precious mother/wife? No story in the FACT that staff saw a rapid decline in Mom's condition but either dismisssed it as the result of pain medication (which did not make sense) or, incomprehensibly in the case of Rachel Suter, assumed she was rapidly deteriorating naturally and needed to be on hospice, when the reality was she was in need of urgent care because she had a UTI? No story in the FACT that staff did not feed Mom or give her adequate liquids for a sufficient enough time for her lips to become black and to become crusted over and cracked? Or that they failed to change her diaper?Really, Mr. Stauch? No story?
  
  Stauch makes this horrible, trivializing statement - diminishing what our Mom suffered - yet expects us to be "amicable"?
• "Death is, sadly, part of every precious life, including your mother's life." Maybe Stauch thought this sounds somehow nice, but regardless of the words, consider what he is essentially saying here. He is saying nothing but this:
  
  Everyone dies, including your mother.
  How is that amicable? How is that polite and pleasant? Knowing what we all have shared - knowing what we've gone through - and Stauch reduces everything to "She simply died. Everyone does eventually."
  
  How is that not the most offensive statement this man could have made?
  
  There is an old saying that would seem to apply here.
  
  "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."
  
  No matter how that statement was made - or any of the others Stauch made in his emails - no matter how "pretty" he may have tried to make them - it was an ugly statement. A cruel one. And yet he complains about Eric's "ugly" voicemails and emails.
• "I am unclear what actions I have taken that intimidated you, but nobody from my firm or MCE has been anything but pleasant to you and your family..."
  
  
  
  
• Hmm, let's make a list, shall we? Let's start with the "intimidate" part of that sentence.
  • He told us we didn't have the First Amendment rights we know we have.
  • He threatened to sue us for libel when nothing we had said or posted anywhere met the qualifications for libel.
  • He sent us a Cease and Desist letter with baseless threats.
• What about the "pleasant" part? This directly correlates with his word "amicable" from that first email.
  • He never expressed empathy or sympathy, even fake sympathy, and never introduced himself, foregoing acceptable professional protocol.
  • He accused us of making inaccurate, exaggerated statements - untrue statements; i.e., he called us liars.
  • He never returned Eric's phone calls and intentionally left Eric and Jenna and "Bobbi" (our other sister) off email communication with Ben in which he displayed resentment over Eric's correcting him on the legal definition of libel.
  • He rejected our proposed settlement agreement out of hand, for what he called "obvious reasons" (which he did not explain), not even offering any kind of understanding of our concerns and our point of view; his attitude conveyed complete trivialization of what happened to Mom, and thus, by extension, trivialization of HER.
  • He displayed absolutely no empathy of any kind with the family and, in every message to us, conveyed a tone of disregard for all the evidence we presented.
  • He never responded to our requests for specific examples of anything MCE denied or objected to in our exhaustive, detailed explanations of what happened.
  • He never acknowledged the facts recorded in the medical records of Legacy Willow Bend and Medical City Frisco.
  • And in this very email, in which he says he's been pleasant, he's once again trivializing Mom.
• He shows disdain for Eric's expression of anger and disgust at all that has happened, yet has the gall to chastise Eric for not being "appropriate"; evidently for Tom Stauch, it's completely appropriate for him to dismiss the family's account and the medical records, threaten the family, and accuse every one of them of being liars.

The email was infuriating to Eric. To read such dismissal of Mom...such casual, cold, impersonal disregard for what he knew Mom had suffered...such casual disregard for Truth.

Since Stauch was now claiming, through his assistant, that Dad was the one who needed to ask for Mom's records, Dad wrote Stauch an email, copying Renee Ramsey in defiance of Stauch's "cease and desist" demand, attaching the demand letter below.

Stauch wrote another smarmy reply, actually questioning whether Dad had written the letter or the email (!), but included a link from which the records could be downloaded.

Eric downloaded them and shared with the rest of the family.

The family was disgusted, and even surprised, by what was there.

So what did we find in these "records" that MCE had kept?

The majority of what was included was a copy of the records from Legacy at Willow Bend.

The only records that were from Mom's stay at Mustang Creek were supposed to be records of care and medication management. The list of medications was there, along with pages for recording the medications that were given her. There was a page for each day she was there.

But every page was blank.

No one had recorded giving Mom ANY medications - not her prescriptions, not anything. In fact, there was no record of ANYTHING in these so-called "records." They consisted of logs with nothing recorded.

The family was at an impasse on how to proceed. Living in the state of Texas, with our pro-business, anti-consumer laws, there was not much we could do unless we could find someone in the media who would pick up the story.

Then Covid-19 hit.

Continue with the story here...