Legislative Committee on Human Services

Legislative Committee on Human Services
August 21, 1996
Testimony of David Marks
Introduction by Representative Hilderbran:
Next is David Marks. He is an attorney from Houston who has worked extensively on these issues and is going to advise the Committee on some ideas that he has for us. I might say that David also has long battled in these issues to the point that he lost his job as a prosecutor once that I know of, and I think he may have lost it twice. But thank you very much for being here. If you would state your name and who you represent for the record now. Thanks.
Testimony
I’m David Marks and I’m here representing myself.
Members of the Committee and Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today about a subject that I have been involved in for some nineteen years that I have been practicing law as an attorney in the State of Texas. For seventeen of those years, I have been involved as either a public servant for the State of Texas or in a private capacity as an attorney in issues involving the rights of elderly nursing home residents.
I have served in the capacity as a District Attorney, prosecuting cases involving nursing home abuse and neglect. I was a Special Prosecutor over the years for the Attorney General’s office, prosecuting cases involving nursing home abuse and neglect. I have served as an attorney for the Medicaid Fraud Division of the Attorney General’s office and the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s office of this state involved in the enforcement of the rights of nursing home residents. And for the past five years I have been practicing in a private capacity where the bulk of my practice involves the subject of nursing home abuse and neglect.
What I would like to share with you today are some of my thoughts, and primarily on two particular issues that I think are relevant to the current bill of rights and are relevant to the issues that nursing home residents are confronted with today. There are two issues, and one is accountability and the other issue is deterrence. And let me come first to accountability.

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