By Joshua Molina

The state Department of Justice and Beverly La Cumbre attorneys have a March 16 court hearing on whether certain information seized from the embattled nursing home and the residence of a top corporate official should be returned.

At the hearing, a judge is expected to decide whether state authorities must return privileged attorney-client information that may have been found on the computer hard drives, said Thomas A. Temmerman, senior assistant attorney general with the Department of Justice.

"When you seize the hard drives, you take everything from the video games to the smoking guns," Temmerman said. "If it's clearly privileged information, we're not going to fight a losing battle."

In January, special agents seized hundreds of paper and electronic files from the hospital, looking for criminal evidence of abuse and neglect or fraud at the nursing home. The same day, agents also obtained a search warrant for the Los Angeles County home of regional vice president Sharon Koroshec, Temmerman said.

Beverly corporate spokesman Dan Springer said that the company is cooperating with the Department of Justice, but said he doesn't agree with the decision to enter Koroshec's home.

"They didn't leave with much," Springer said, speaking on behalf of Koroshec. "It came across as an extreme disruption to her and her husband. It was more of a scare tactic than a productive tactic on the part of the agents."

Springer also criticized the News-Press for writing articles about the embattled nursing home: "The more you report negatively about it, the more you are adding to the problem than creating a solution," he said. Beverly is the largest provider of elderly health care in the nation, operating more than 600 facilities. Beverly La Cumbre, at 3880 Via Lucero, is the largest nursing home in Santa Barbara County.

Also recently, requests to dismiss most of the allegations contained in five lawsuits filed against Beverly La Cumbre have been denied by four different judges in Santa Barbara Superior Court.

The five lawsuits involve former and current Beverly La Cumbre residents who had alleged fraud, misconduct, elder abuse, neglect and a number of charges in separate lawsuits filed since September. The suits were filed on behalf of former residents Adela Radle, Frankie Williams, James Clark, Ray Romero and current residents Paul and Doris Sleeth. No trial dates have been set for any of the cases.

In all, nine lawsuits have been filed against Beverly La Cumbre since the News-Press reported the story of Mary Hochman, a nurse at Beverly La Cumbre who left behind a suicide note and a journal claiming that she was told to cover up incidents of abuse and neglect at the hospital. Public records maintained by the state Department of Health Services revealed that Beverly has had care problems recently, including two citations for being understaffed.

The federal Health Care Financing Administration revoked the nursing home's federal funding for new admissions to the hospital on Dec. 21. If Beverly doesn't correct its problems soon, the federal government has warned that it will deny all Medicare and Medi-Cal funding on April 16.

The warning followed a series of health care violations committed by Beverly, and a poor annual survey by Health Services in October that revealed excessive health-care deficiencies. State investigators made another visit in December. At that time they found the facility was still not in compliance.