Sacramento elder abuse law firm Dudensing Law has made its second expansion after taking out office space in Century City.
While the firm has handled about 10 cases from the Los Angeles area, founder and lead counsel Ed Dudensing said he aims to have between five and 10 cases at any given time stemming from the region. Planting roots here will help achieve that, he said, and he plans to add at least two attorneys.
“I believe there’s a big marketplace and a need, with everything I know about the marketplace,” Dudensing said. We do feel we are the most qualified. With the advent of Zoom and the way the world is, long-term health care defense is very consolidated, so we thought it was important to expand our firm into Southern California.”
A former prosecutor, Dudensing said his interest in the specialty began after handling financial elder abuse cases. His practice mainly targets abuse in long-term care facilities such as skilled nursing facilities and hospices, and about 75% of the firm’s cases are brought by the family members of deceased victims, he said.
Dudensing called plaintiff’s work in the space “righteous” and said there remains a lack of specialized elder abuse firms in the plaintiff’s space – he speculated that 80% of such cases are run by non-specialist attorneys, whereas the defense side has ample Big Law options.
We have a lot more to offer people in this area,” Dudensing said. “We know how to prosecute these cases. We know how to take them to the end. We know the value of these cases.”
The increasingly corporatized nature of long-term elder care facilities also serves as a motivating factor, Dudensing added.
“It’s an enterprise that is becoming more and more occupied by Big Financial – private equity, REITs – getting into the space, which makes things worse because their profit motivations are clear and unambiguous,” he said. “There’s not a lot of criminal enforcement in these cases when it comes to long-term health care providers. Regulatory enforcement is very minimal as well.”
The firm previously added an office in the Bay Area a few years ago.
