Tony Chicotel and Michael Molland
In recognition of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, our June speakers will be Tony Chicotel, staff attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR) and elder abuse attorney Michael Molland of Molland Law. Tony and Michael will address patient’s rights, how elder care has become corporate care, and how the California law applies. When elders enter a hospital or nursing facility each and every one of them have certain basic rights that must be honored by their care providers. It is not that our for-profit healthcare system does not care about these rights. Rather, the problem is most care providers are set up to make money, and as a result have a strong incentive to care about themselves first. Tony and Michael will speak to this issue, answer your questions, and provide legal tools to defend elders from corporate abuse.
Tony Chicotel is from Cleveland, Ohio and a graduate of The Ohio State University College of Law and the University of California School of Public Policy. For the first three years of his practice, he worked in Las Vegas representing people in mental health facilities. After moving to San Diego, Tony spent six years as a staff attorney for a program providing free legal services to San Diego County residents aged 60 and older. His primary role was as the lead attorney for the agency’s Nursing Home Rights Enforcement Project. For the past nine years, Tony has worked as a staff attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform in San Francisco and has teaches elder law and policy courses in various Bay Area universities. He has written a number of publications regarding the rights of long-term care consumers, conservatorships, and health care decision making.
Favorite things include: sunshine, sleeping in, big hugs, and vigor. Unfavorite things include: intolerance, fences and locks, and vinegar.
For over two decades Michael was a trial lawyer at two of America’s largest corporate law firms. There he was lead trial counsel in over forty trials, going to final verdict in twenty and amassing 150 weeks of jury trial experience. He was one of the plaintiff trial lawyers in the historic Fibreboard and Western MacArthur insurance coverage litigations which resulted in some of largest reported insurance recoveries in California.
In 2013 Michael started his own firm, Molland Law, in order use his trial skills as a corporate lawyer to help the most vulnerable in our Bay Area communities, seniors and the families who care for them. He continues to practice trial law focused on corporations, but now on the side of those who have been injured by the businesses they have trusted with their health or money. He is currently litigating cases involving both financial fraud and elder abuse in Northern California courts.