POMEROY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa authorities had no duty to protect residents of a nursing home from a sexual predator who assaulted a 95-year-old resident after being committed there by court order, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.

State officials had no legal obligation to supervise William Cubbage after they petitioned a judge to have him released from a state treatment program for the most dangerous sex offenders, the Iowa Court of Appeals said. They also were not required to develop a safety plan for Cubbage once a judge agreed to have him sent to the Pomeroy Care Center, a nursing home in western Iowa, the three-judge panel ruled.

The ruling upholds a lower court's dismissal of personal injury claims against the state brought by the estate of the victim, who has since died. Additional claims still pending accuse the nursing home of failing to prevent the August 2011 assault.

Cubbage, now 87, was ordered held for treatment at the state-run Civil Commitment Unit for Sexual Offenders after completing a prison sentence in 2002. He had been convicted of numerous sexual crimes against minors between 1987 and 2000, and was diagnosed with pedophilia. After developing dementia, state officials agreed further treatment was unlikely to succeed but that he still needed full-time custody and care.

A judge in November 2010 ordered Cubbage placed at the Pomeroy Care Center, ruling that he remained a danger to himself and others due to dementia and executive dysfunction. Less than a year later, the child of a staff member saw Cubbage sexually assaulting the 95-year-old woman in her room. The victim filed a lawsuit in 2012 before she died.

Prosecutors did not pursue criminal charges against Cubbage, opting instead to have him held in a prison hospital pending a civil trial on whether he should be recommitted to the sex offender program. Ultimately, the civil case was dropped in 2014 and Cubbage was moved into a state mental health institute.

The lawyer for the victim's estate, Willis Hamilton, said Wednesday he disagreed with the appeals court decision and would consider asking the Iowa Supreme Court for further review. He said the state no longer wanted to pay for Cubbage's expensive sexual offender treatment, so "they dumped him in a nursing home where Medicaid could pay for him."

"They said he was a danger to others and yet they put him in a nursing home with little old ladies in their 70s and 80s with no protections," he said. "To say I'm disappointed in the result is an understatement."

Spokesman Geoff Greenwood said the Iowa attorney general's office agrees with the ruling, written by Judge Gayle Vogel and joined by Judges David Danilson and Amanda Potterfield.

Vogel ruled that once Cubbage was released without conditions from the treatment program by a judge, the state "had no ongoing obligation to monitor or supervise" him.