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Part 1: Summary of the Story

Below is a bulleted, very high-level timeline of what happened so that you can quickly understand the gist of the tragedy that befell our Mother and how irresponsible Mustang Creek Estates was, as well as the horrible way their attorney, Tom Stauch, utterly minimized what actually happened and dishonored Mom's memory and insulted the family. After you read the summary, we hope you will then take the time to read the in-depth narrative.

  • Our Mother, at age 82, was diagnosed with angiosarcoma in March 2019.
  • By September 2019, the cancer was over 99% gone from her body, following radiation treatment and surgery.
  • Mom was in good overall health, though she had physical limitations due to multiple radical back surgeries in the past. She lived with our Dad in an assisted living facility in Allen, Texas (Vitality Court), and could get around with a walker. She was very mentally healthy for her age as well and put up an amazing fight against the cancer.
  • November 1, 2019, she had plastic surgery to cover the area of skin tissue that had been removed from her scalp. It was not merely a graft but a "flap," including skin and muscle. The surgery was 8 hours long, and she came out of it with some cognitive impairment due to the anesthesia. After spending some time in the hospital in recovery, she was moved to Legacy at Willow Bend, a rehabilitation center, to help her build back her strength and her ability to move around, as well as to help her with the cognition issues the surgery had caused.
  • Late December, Medicare said they would not cover any further rehabilitation even though she was making progress. Her progress was not "fast enough." At this time, she could not get out of bed on her own and was only starting to get to the point she could get out of bed with assistance. A hoyer lift was needed to get her from bed to a wheelchair.
  • Vitality Court informed us they did not have staff/resources to help her with a hoyer lift, so we had to find another place to move her. We checked with several assisted living facilities but almost all said they could not help with the hoyer lift.
  • We were referred to Mustang Creek Estates (MCE) in Frisco, Texas. MCE told us they could assist with the hoyer lift. They promised they could keep a 24 hour watch on Mom. They told us that while they did not have a nurse on the premisess, they did have a nurse on call 24/7 and would call for the nurse if any issues arose. They also told us they would manage Mom's medications. We made it clear, and they said they understood, that Mom's goal was to continue with rehab therapy and get to the point she could get up on her own and use the walker again.
  • Mom was evaluated prior to leaving Legacy Willow Bend. She was stated to be in good health and slowly improving.
  • Mom was moved to Mustang Creek on December 27.
  • That evening, a staff member who was supposed to know how to use a hoyer lift dropped Mother over two feet from the lift to her bed. This was witnessed by two family members.
  • The next day, Mom called our Dad and complained that the staff had dropped her again and were "spoonfeeding [her] like a baby.
  • The family at this time was busily trying to get Dad moved from Vitality Court to MCE so that he could be with Mom. We were trusting that MCE would take care of Mom as they had promised.
  • On January 1, we found Mom unable to wake up, only able to barely mumble. Her lips were blackened and dried with blood.
  • We called 911. The paramedic noticed that her adult diaper was soaked and suspected she had a UTI.
  • The doctor at the ER informed us that Mom was severely dehydrated and had not had liquids in at least 48 hours. She did in fact have a UTI. (And the staff had not changed her underwear, as the paramedic had discovered.) She had developed Toxic Metabolic Encephalopathy, a very serious condition that can happen if an infection is not treated. Essentially the UTI had spread to her brain. This can cause delirousness, incoherence, and brain damage. She had to have had the infection for several days, and it was left untreated.
  • Mom was put on IV antiobiotics in the ER and then moved to a room.
  • On January 2, her heart stopped suddenly. She had no previous heart problems/issues. Indeed, her evaluations at Legacy had stated she seemed to have a strong, healthy heart.
  • She passed away that night.
  • MCE staff began to claim they did not know her baseline condition when she moved in. They said that they believed her incoherent mumbling was "normal" for her.
  • MCE management then said that the UTI must have developed very rapidly, within a couple hours.
  • The owner of MCE, Renee Ramsey, then claimed that the staff had no kind of medical training and couldn't be expected to know something was wrong. She claimed (even though we had been promised and told differently) that the staff can't keep an eye on someone and that they are there only to "assist." So, essentially, the management suddenly changed their tune about what MCE could do.
  • We requested MCE's records from Mom's stay and they did not provide them until three months later, and only after we threatened them. We discovered that they had not kept any records. They did not record giving her any medication or anything of the sort.
  • Dad had paid MCE $11,600 for Mom and him to move into the assisted living community. Dad decided he could not stay there after the way their negligence and dishonesty had led to Mom's death. We moved him out within a week.
  • Dad requested a refund of the money he had spent. After all, Mom had only been there a few days and did not receive the care we had been promised. He himself only stayed a week.
  • No one responded to his request for a refund for several weeks. In the meantime, MCE sent a bill for another month's rent, including for Mom's room, and said that the resident agreement spelled out that if a resident dies while living there, without giving 30 days notice, the rent is still owed for an entire month.
  • We sought legal counsel, thinking surely we could sue MCE for negligence leading to death, but we were shocked to discover a horrible truth about the malpractice and personal injury laws in Texas. Multiple attorneys told us that due to "tort reform" that the GOP controlled legislature had pushed through several years ago, negligence by AL facilities and nursing homes was classified as medical malpractice, not personal injury. Second, medical malpractice was essentially done away with for all intents and purposes. Buyoued by their corporate donors, legislators had capped malpractice damages at $250,000, and had installed a complex process of bureacratic hurdles and hoops that made the possibility of actually winning a lawsuit tremendously unlikely. It was a process that could take AT LEAST two years, and the legal costs would end up being as much as the highest possible damages that could be awarded. So in essence, there would be no real damages awarded in the long run. Therefore, almost no attorneys take these cases anymore, and even those who do will only consider it if there was an autopsy. This was very depressing and discouraging, as well as infuriating, to say the least.
  • MCE finally responded to us via their attorney, Tom Stauch, who told us that Renee Ramsey would only refund Dad's money if we all agreed not to tell anyone about what had happened.
  • In the meantime, family members began leaving reviews of MCE online (Google reviews, Yelp, SeniorAdvisor, etc.), as well as on the BBB website. There, we found what we wish we had discovered before - that numerous people had horrible experiences with MCE, and that we were not the first family to have a loved one die there after only being a resident for a short while.
  • We told Tom Stauch that we would not give up our right to tell others what had happened, and that his "proposal" was essentially offering us "hush money."
  • Tom Stauch then responded that we did not have the right to disparage the business, and threatened that he would sue us if we did not take down the reviews, which he claimed were "inaccurate" and full of "exaggerations." He did not state what he thought was inaccurate or exaggerated.
  • We demanded that he explain what was inaccurate and reiterated that everything said in the reviews was factual and could be backed up with medical records and the testimony of the medical personnel who had treated Mom, as well as the staff at Legacy Willow Bend. He never responded.
  • One of us, who has a background in journalism and who has actually taught Media Law at the college level, told Tom Stauch that he was not going to intimidate us, because we know the law. We told him that libel (1) has to be false and that the person making a libelous statement (2) has to know it is not factual.
  • Stauch evidently didn't appreciate being corrected, as he responded that he "wasn't going to debate the law," and after this, his attitude toward that family member was dismissive and rude. (More on this later.)
  • Another family member proposed to Stauch that the family should be compensated beyond Dad's refund, given how MCE had failed our mother and how they failed to show any remorse for their negligence. Stauch responded that he would not agree to that "for obvious reasons."
  • The family member who had apparently offended Stauch tried calling him, but Stauch would not return his calls. In one email to the family, Stauch said that he saw a call coming in from that family member, but he was not going to answer it.
  • In two different emails, Stauch said that "there is no story here," and that "people die, and that includes your mother."
  • Since we could not do anything legally, given that no lawyers will take these kinds of cases in Texas, and given that the system is specifically designed to protect doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, etc, we left the situation alone for awhile, especially when Covid hit.
  • In December 2020, the family member who had offended Stauch by calling out his twisting of the law and attempt to intimidate the family tried calling Stauch, but Stauch would not take his calls and would not return them. So he left a series of messages on Stauch's voicemail, letting him know that several family members were soon going to publish a website detailing what had happened. He explained that the website would include actual statements made by Mustang Creek staff, and that it would include verbatim emails that Stauch himself had sent the family. He also stated that the website would include the MCE Resident Agreement, which Stauch's firm likely drew up as MCE's counsel, and point out how it shrewdly requires residents sign away their rights to hold the MCE staff responsible for negligence, how it requires residents to give a 30 day notice before moving out - even if they die, and how MCE would not honor any verbal promises. This family member was seeking only a refund of the $11,600 that Dad had spent. He was not demanding more than that.
  • Stuach did not respond in any way, either by email or by phone.
  • In February, this family member called Stauch again and left another message, informing him that the URL mustangcreekestatesreview.com had been secured and that a temporary page was up explaining what would be coming soon.
  • This time, apparently realizing the family member had not been bluffing, Stauch did respond. He remailed the other family members, clearly very upset, and made blatantly false claims. He stated that the family member had threatened to "impersonate" him (Stauch) and MCE staff, and that this was illegal. He said that if the site was published with this "illegal" content, he would inform the authorities.
  • The family knew Stauch was lying about what their sibling had told him, because they all knew about the website and knew there were no plans to "impersonate" Stauch or anyone else, because the facts and truths were more than enough to expose what MCE had done (or failed to do) and publicize how Stauch had treated the family.
  • No one responded to Stauch.
  • Stauch knew he couldn't pursue civil litigation because everything on the site was factual and could be proven. There was no libel, and there was definitely no "impersonation."
  • Stauch called Allen Police Department and provided them with the emails and voicemails the family member had sent, seeking some way to go after the family member via law enforcement since he had no civil case.
  • An Allen PD detective called the family member to ask about the situation, and informed him that Stauch had hoped he could claim there was extortion involved. But there was no evidence for extortion. So the detective said that the emails and voicemails were excessive and might amount to "harassment." He said he would talk to Stauch about what he wanted to do.
  • Allen PD ended up charging the family member with "harassment - repeated electronic communication." However, the family member was told by McKinney PD that in order for harassment to actually take place, the complainant had to have told the person to stop communicating. (There is reason to suspect that Stauch "pushed" the Allen detective to find a charge, given that the original complaint was not about harassment.)
  • Stauch had never - not once- told the family member to stop calling or emailing. Indeed, he had never responded in any way except in two emails that were dismissive and cruel - the emails saying "There is no story here" and "Sometimes people die, including your mother."
  • There cannot be a coincidence that Stauch emailed the family, distressed and upset about the existence of the website, resorting to lying about what the sibling had said would be on the site, and then only a few days later filed a complaint with Allen PD.
  • All of this happened because (1) MCE would not offer Dad a refund without strings attached and (2) Tom Stauch was offended that anyone would call out his distortions of the law and stand up to his bullying and his abuse of the law.
  • Oh, and the harassment charge was dismissed.

Continue with Part 2 to begin reading the details of our story.