HOLYOKE, MASS. (WHDH) - The attorney for the ousted superintendent of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home on Thursday pushed back against a lawsuit that was filed against his client after a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility resulted in dozens of deaths, saying “the attack on his good name was false.”
Investigators concluded the Home’s superintendent, Bennett Walsh, was unfit to preside over the facility, especially amid a pandemic that exacted an unimaginable toll of death and devastation throughout the United States.
The family of a late resident of the home filed a $176 million class-action civil rights lawsuit against Walsh and other administrators last week, alleging that they “completely failed” in containing the coronavirus, which spread like wildfire and claimed the lives of 76 veterans.
Walsh’s attorney, William M. Bennett, said at a press conference that his client never tried to conceal any evidence.
“Mr. Walsh never tried to conceal any evidence, he and his staff regularly updated state officials about the coronavirus, and there was no coverup,” Bennett said. “The attack on his good name was false.”
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a scathing independent investigation that identified “substantial errors and failures by the Home’s leadership that likely contributed to the death toll during the outbreak.”
The most substantial error made by the Home’s leadership team came on March 27, when they decided to move all veterans from one of the two locked dementia units into the other locked dementia unit, where they would be crowded in with the veterans already living there, investigators said.
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