It was a perfect storm: A drug-abusing dad with more than 30 prior convictions, an inexperienced social worker and an 11-year-old girl, buffeted in the middle.
While Sacramento citizens committees examine child abuse and neglect deaths, focusing on the most extreme cases, a number of children who don’t die have their own hazardous brushes with the system. This is the story of one such child.
The girl’s case comes to light only because she sued Sacramento Child Protective Services and two social workers for what happened to her in August 2001 — five years after the death of 3-year-old Adrian Conway, and the county’s promise to place child safety over “family preservation.”
A 22-year-old North Highlands man was sentenced Friday to 15 years to life in prison for the hit- and-run collision that killed a nurse who weeks earlier had lost his daughter in another car crash.
A 61-year-old man was sentenced Thursday to two life terms in prison with a possibility of parole for arson and the attempted murder of five Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies.
No one saw who started the 50-acre wildfire that burned dangerously close to homes near El Dorado Hills in September 1999.
But authorities say they quickly turned their attention to an ex-state firefighter and Placer County fire district candidate who had a knack for showing up around fires and firefighters.
El Dorado County Deputy District Attorney Paul Sutherland said Robert Lizarraga appeared shortly after the blaze broke out near Salmon Falls Road and chatted eagerly with firefighters. In Lizarraga’s car, he said, investigators found a uniform shirt, badge and flashlight stolen from a firetruck in Sacramento County.
A former Sacramento property manager was sentenced Friday to 100 days of community service for her conviction on misdemeanor hate crime charges against a black family.
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.
