SUMMIT COUNTY, Ohio (WOIO) - The family of 38-year-old Brian Taylor has filed a lawsuit alleging medical negligence at a group home contributed to his death from sepsis in May 2025.
Brian Taylor was diagnosed with a chromosomal abnormality at 11 months old, leaving him non-verbal, according to his mother, Donna Sandy.
He learned how to walk and enjoyed being active.
“When the family would come in he would light up,” Sandy said.
Taylor lived with Sandy until he was 20, when she moved him into a group home in Tallmadge.
“It was like 5 other guys so that he would feel that he would fit in and he would be able to be around people like him,” Sandy said.
Taylor lived at the group home for nearly two decades.
Sandy said that starting about two years before his death, her son stopped receiving the same level of care.
“He would be just laying on a loveseat he curled up in a ball, nobody working with him, no physical therapy,” Sandy said.
The lawsuit, filed by Taylor’s family, alleges that once Empowering People took over the group home in 2023, the company reduced “the number, quality, qualifications, and training of the staff caring for residents like Brian.”
Attorney Michael Hill is representing the family.
“At one point in November of 2023, he’s actually physically abused, he’s slapped in the face, and he had a significant bruise,” Hill said. “The family never learns of this until they’re contacted by the prosecutor nine months later.”
The employee involved pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, according to Summit County court records.
The lawsuit alleges the negligence toward Taylor continued.
“They were seeing Brian physically tied and restrained to a chair and what ends up happening from that is he ends up developing a large sore on his hip,” Hill said. “That’s from what we believe and we allege and we think the evidence is going to prove that the very reason for that was being restrained.”
Hill said the wound, which he described as preventable, worsened and led to Taylor’s hospitalization.
Taylor was then moved to Altercare in Cuyahoga Falls.
“And the expectation is they’re going to provide wound care, that’s the promise, they’re going to make him better,” Hill said. “He doesn’t get better he, in fact, gets even less care than he’s getting at the group home which should never happen in a nursing home.”
According to the Medina County coroner, Taylor’s cause of death was sepsis.
“The coroner determined that that sepsis was caused by the infected pressure injury or decubitus ulcer that Brian developed because of what happened at the group home,” Hill said.
“He should have lived a lot longer, he should have been living past me and that’s not what happened,” Sandy said.
The attorney representing Altercare said the matter is in litigation and cannot be commented on at this time.
The attorney for Empowering People has not responded to 19 News’ request for comment.