Lawsuit accuses nursing home chain of providing inadequate care

By Daniel Hawn

Published on March 16, 2006

Trial Attorney Stephen Garcia of the Blackman Legal Group based in Burlingame, Calif., filed the lawsuit against Longwood Management Corp. The suit alleges that residents of 31 nursing homes operated by Longwood suffered from neglect because employees failed to provide the requisite hours of care set forth by a state law passed in 2000.

In the suit, the plaintiffs claim their elderly mother, Estelle Benkle, was neglected by workers at the Longwood home in Sherman Oaks and was forced to lay in her own urine and feces. Benkle incurred bedsores that became infected and eventually caused her death.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is based, in part, on a California law that requires nursing homes provide a minimum of 3.2 nursing hours per day for each resident. Garcia accuses the named nursing homes of consistently failing to meet this minimum requirement.

Representative of Longwood would not comment specifically on the case; however they did deny the allegations, saying that staff members develop a close bond with the people they care for.

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