A bankruptcy judge blocked an attempt by a nursing home chain’s primary investor to shield himself from settlement payments and liability in lawsuits alleging hundreds of patient injuries and deaths, encouraging those pursuing millions in damages. Genesis HealthCare, once the nation’s largest nursing home chain, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in July with a proposal to protect its controlling investor, Joel Landau, from legal liability. In court papers, Genesis had originally estimated all its settled and pending cases — which it said numbered nearly a thousand — would cost $259 million to resolve. KFF Health News reported this month that in the years before filing for bankruptcy, Genesis had settled at least 155 patient injury and death lawsuits with provisions that allowed it to delay paying, sometimes for more than a year. As a result, when Genesis filed for bankruptcy in July, it still owed $41 million out of the $58 million promised in those settlements with families of current or former residents, according to the bankruptcy and case records KFF Health News reviewed. In hearings Wednesday and last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, Judge Stacey G.C. Jernigan said she would not approve a sale of the company’s assets that included legal releases from liability for Landau and a private equity associate, David Gefner. Landau, who was seeking to purchase the assets through another company he controlled, did not attend the bankruptcy hearings or respond to a subpoena, lawyers said in court. “I’m very encouraged that someone…
