How Victoria Schall is Beating the Corporate Shell Game in Nursing Home Litigation

Corporate greed and care cannot exist together. The only way to win is if you play a different game altogether. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Victoria Schall, New Jersey Supreme Court certified civil trial attorney and Founder of Schall at Law, reveals her rule book for advocating against nursing home abuse and winning neglect litigation. Drawing from her journey as a teenage facility volunteer through her current role as a leading advocate for vulnerable long-term care residents, Victoria shares practical strategies for building compelling cases, navigating complex medical documentation and holding corporate entities (particularly private equity-backed chains) accountable for systemic failures in care. Tune in for her inspiring journey of mastering the intersection of corporate accountability and resident dignity.

What You’ll Learn:

How to leverage the "dignity matters" framework in jury selection by asking jurors whether the manner of death matters to them

Why electronic health records (EHR) systems like PointClickCare require specialized litigation support

The corporate structure strategy and how to beat it

How to build cases around residents' rights violations in addition to physical injuries

The staffing data methodology and why it’s a sign of systemic corporate failure

Why family engagement and detailed documentation matter for case strength

Tune in for her inspiring journey of mastering the intersection of corporate accountability and resident dignity.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction

02:06 From Teenage Volunteer to Nursing Home Advocate

07:56 Dignity Over Age: Reframing the Standard of Care

10:14 The Connection Between Culture and Care

13:08 Private Equity's Impact on Resident Care Quality

17:32 Navigating Corporate Structure in Litigation Strategy

20:10 Electronic Health Records: The AI Opportunity Gap

21:37 Building Expert Teams Through Industry Knowledge

25:49 Strategic Jury Selection: The Dignity Question

30:24 A Good Family is One That Cared

31:37 Residents' Rights Violations as Standalone Claims

36:46 Advising Administrators: Accountability and Whistleblowing

39:10 Defining Success Beyond Settlements

47:13 Victoria’s Hot Take: Transparency as the Industry's

49:00 Key Takeaways & Final Thoughts

Quotes:

"For me, dignity matters no matter what age you are, no matter what your conditions are. The nursing standard of care requires them to do full body head to toe assessments and provide proper care based on those assessments. I would rather focus on the dignity of what everyone deserves as a human being, regardless of their age and whatever conditions they have."
"There's studies that show that the care under private equity is worse than you would get under state or nonprofit type of facility operations. When a facility goes from nonprofit to privately owned, you end up with people whose pay is slashed, benefits are slashed, and a lot of the older staff ends up getting forced out. You can watch from a timeline perspective what happens in a facility when you go from nonprofit to private equity."
The question should be, let's see your financial statements and let's have that corporate transparency in order to understand where the money is going. More times than not, the money is not going back to direct care, but it's going to ownership pockets."
‘For me, success is always about getting the accountability of what happened, regardless of what the actual final dollar amount is. I never want to take a case where I make a fee and my costs get paid back, but the client doesn't see anything at the end of the day.”