Alando Williams died at Windsor Healthcare Center of Oakland after allegedly being overmedicated to prevent wandering. Dudensing Law represents Mr. Williams’ daughter Kyomi in a lawsuit against the facility. Despite arriving with a treatment plan, the nursing home reportedly failed to follow necessary safety measures, opting instead to administer unauthorized doses of sedatives and opioids. Ed Dudensing spoke with The Sacramento Bee regarding the facility’s neglect and mistreatment of Williams’ father, who was known in the Berkeley community for his gentle demeanor.
On January 24th, a Sacramento jury returned verdicts totaling in excess of $30 million against the owners of Pine Creek Care Center and their various corporate entities. The Superior Court jury returned a verdict of $5.9 million in compensatory damages, and a $25 million verdict for punitive damages. Elder abuse attorney Ed Dudensing argued that the facility and its owners prioritized profits over patient care, implementing staff cuts that made the nursing home unsafe for residents.
“We hope and pray that both the nursing home and the private equity industries will receive the message sent by the jury that it is simply wrong to prioritize profits over patient care,” Dudensing said.
In what one elder abuse advocate says is the largest verdict of its kind in Sacramento history, a jury has awarded $42.5 million in punitive and compensatory damages to the family of a woman who died after being sent to live in Eskaton’s assisted living facility in Orangevale.
In a strongly worded ruling, a Sacramento Superior Court judge has upheld a $29 million verdict against a Rocklin nursing home company in the 2005 death of an elderly patient.
Judge Roland Candee on Tuesday rejected Horizon West Healthcare’s arguments for a new trial or significantly reduced damages in the case involving Stockton native Frances Tanner.
Candee said “overwhelming” and “devastatingly powerful” evidence in the trial in May supported the jury’s verdict and damage awards against Horizon, which owns 33 nursing homes mostly in Northern California.
Make them feel it, attorney Ed Dudensing urged Sacramento Superior Court jurors who were weighing whether to financially punish a Rocklin nursing home company they had earlier found guilty of elder abuse.
Dudensing told the panel Thursday to hit Horizon West Healthcare hard so company leaders would think twice about understaffing facilities and providing substandard care.
The jury listened. In an award believed to be the largest of its kind in Sacramento County history, the panel awarded $28 million in punitive damages in the death of 79-year-old Stockton native Frances Tanner.
A Sacramento Superior Court jury on Wednesday found that an Auburn nursing home committed elder abuse in the death of a Northern California woman in 2005.
For the fourth time in recent years, an Auburn nursing home is on the hot seat in the death of an elderly patient.
In a civil case playing out in Sacramento Superior Court, Colonial Healthcare is fighting accusations that it put profits before good care in the death of Stockton native and longtime civil servant Frances Tanner.
Tanner was a spirited 79-year-old woman who suffered from mild dementia when she moved into the home in March 2005, according to testimony before Judge Roland Candee. Seven months later, after a fall that resulted in a broken hip, she was dead from an infected bedsore.
More than a quarter of nursing homes in the capital area fared poorly in a five-star rating system introduced by the federal government on Thursday.
Only four facilities in Sacramento County garnered the top rating — five stars — while 11 were deemed as “much below average” by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Agency.
Ratings are no longer just the domain of restaurant and movie critics or travel guides. The government hopes its rating system — available online at www.medicare.gov/nhcompare — will give consumers a snapshot of whether nursing homes have stellar or not-so-stellar performance based on state inspection records, staffing and other measures of quality.
“Part of the problem with the information that has been previously available is that it hasn’t always been useful, because it hasn’t always been accessible. It was hard to do a comparison,” said Ed Dudensing, a Sacramento elder abuse attorney who specializes in nursing home cases.
They had names and faces once. Now they have coroner’s numbers.
Social workers call them their “worst outcomes.”
Adrian Conway was 3 when he became Sacramento’s Worst Outcome No. 96-00441, a little boy who was beaten, burned, bruised, bound, tortured and starved to death by his angry, drug-abusing mom.
Others have followed: Christopher Cejas, 12, No. 02-03984. Alexia and Akira Noel, 3-month-old twins, Nos. 04-03525 and 03526. Keith Carl “K.C.” Balbuena, 3, No. 05-05953.
This summer we welcomed Gavin Bowen as one of our four summer clerks.
Gavin is a rising 3L at UC Berkeley School of Law, where he competes on the Alternative Dispute Resolution team and served as an article's editor for the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law. He also led the Animal Law and Advocacy Project at Berkeley.
Gavin graduated with a degree in psychology and arrived at plaintiff-side litigation as the place where advocacy and integrity align.
Dudensing Law is now on Substack! Founder Ed Dudensing will be sharing legal analysis, case insights, and commentary on the issues shaping elder care in California and beyond.
If you have ever wanted to understand elder abuse cases, what the law requires of care facilities, and why corporate structures matter, this is the place.
Some nursing homes are not medicating residents to treat them -- they are using medication to sedate them.
Founder Ed Dudensing has seen this pattern throughout his career: facilities that are chronically understaffed turn to sedatives and antipsychotic medications as a substitute for adequate care.
Ed wrote about the risks of weakening federal oversight of sedative use in nursing homes in an op-ed for the Daily Journal.
We are excited to highlight one of our summer clerks, Elizabeth “Buffy” Miksztal.
Buffy is a rising 3L at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she serves as co-president of the Plaintiffs' Law Association at Berkeley. Before law school, she worked as an EMT responding to calls at skilled nursing facilities, an experience that gives her firsthand insight into the vulnerabilities facing the clients we represent every day.
Buffy externed for District Court Judge Pitts during her 1L summer, where she saw how plaintiff-side civil litigation can serve as a tool for justice for vulnerable populations. Most recently, she worked on criminal defense appeals at the First District Appellate Project in Oakland.
In California elder abuse litigation, understaffing is recognized as far more than a simple management error.
Founder Ed Dudensing, author of the 2025 Rutter Group treatise “Elder Abuse Litigation,” provides critical insights into why chronic understaffing is often a calculated corporate decision to maximize profits at the expense of patient care.
California case law now recognizes that understaffing alone can support a jury finding of “recklessness.” This standard is critical because it shifts the focus from individual errors to corporate decisions that create unsafe conditions for vulnerable residents.
