Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Butler, PA, another Pittsburgh-area care home where a nurse accused of killing patients with insulin was employed, is facing a wrongful death lawsuit. Filed on Wednesday, the lawsuit represents the family of 43-year-old Nicholas Cymbol, who died on May 1 of last year. The lawsuit alleges that Heather Pressdee, a unit manager at the time, injected Cymbol with an excessive and lethal dose of insulin.
Pressdee was charged last May with the deaths of two patients and the hospitalization of a third at Quality Life Services, a skilled nursing facility in Chicora. She is linked to at least 17 patient deaths at five other facilities where she worked, accused in each case of administering deadly levels of insulin.
Before being hired by Sunnyview, the lawsuit states that Pressdee had been fired or forced to resign from ten local medical facilities in four years.
Despite concerns raised by other nurses about Pressdee, the lawsuit alleges that Sunnyview allowed her to continue as a unit manager. Rob Peirce, the managing partner of Robert Peirce and Associates, the firm behind the lawsuit, stated, "We were hired by the families of Heather Pressdee's victims to get answers as to how she was permitted to continue working in these facilities, despite her erratic, disturbing, and abusive behavior."
The lawsuit also claims that Pressdee was particularly abusive to Cymbol, routinely insulting, berating, bullying, and abusing him, and making derogatory remarks about his health, calling him gross and saying that he was going to be the next one to die anyway. Management allegedly did not remove Pressdee from caring for Cymbol or other patients despite these reports.
This lawsuit against Sunnyview follows two earlier ones this month against Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center on behalf of the families of 79-year-old Jack Rogers and 88-year-old Normal Hendrickson. Robert Peirce and Associates also filed a wrongful death lawsuit for the family of Marianne Bower in October.
Pressdee is currently in Butler County Jail, facing four counts of homicide. Peirce remarked, "The criminal system will put her in jail. I expect her to end up in jail for the rest of her life. The purpose of the civil lawsuit and what the families have asked us to do is to do anything we can to prevent this from happening again in the future."