Happy After $3-Million Settlement, They Now Seek Divorce

Seventeen months ago, George and Janet Benda celebrated a record $3.26-million settlement that the Redondo Beach man won from Los Angeles County after he was crippled by a chunk of concrete that fell from Manhattan Beach Pier.

The couple said their lives were finally looking up after the horror of the accident and nearly 2 1/2 years of rehabilitation for George, a wheelchair-bound paraplegic.

Bitter Battle

Since then, however, the couple have filed for divorce and are locked in an increasingly bitter battle over whether George, 50, must share the settlement, the largest lump sum ever awarded by the county.

And in a lawsuit filed last week in Torrance Superior Court, Benda charges that his estranged wife temporarily made off with $450,000 of the money and his pet cat.

The lawsuit demands more than $1 million in damages, charging that Janet Benda disappeared for five days last year with $450,000 in gold coins, a portion of the settlement awarded to her husband after he was paralyzed from the rib cage down in 1984.

The suit also names his wife’s son by a previous marriage, Mark Meisenbach, and her attorney, Werner De Winne, and accuses them of conspiring to defraud him of his money.

Mrs. Benda, 48, who now lives in Marin County, insisted in an interview this week that it was she who had suffered mental anguish. She said her husband became depressed and foul-tempered after the accident, verbally abusing her although she cared for him around the clock.

De Winne denied the charges, and Meisenbach could not be reached for comment.

Benda was injured Aug. 23, 1984. He was stretching in preparation for a run on the beach when a 150-pound chunk of concrete broke loose from the bottom of the 74-year-old, county-maintained pier and fell onto his back, severing his spinal column.

The couple had been living together at the time, and they were married about one year after the accident. Twenty months into the marriage, the Board of Supervisors voted to pay Benda the settlement.

But the money did not bring happiness. Less than eight months later, the couple filed for divorce.

Janet Benda claimed in her divorce papers that she was entitled to share in an estimated $2 million in community property, including the gold coins. She later filed a separate palimony lawsuit, claiming that before the marriage Benda promised her at least one-third of any settlement.

But George Benda says the settlement money belongs to him alone.

“It’s his injury. It’s his settlement,” said Buffy L. Roney, Benda’s attorney.

In his lawsuit, Benda says that last November, just before divorce papers were filed, his wife offered to take the gold coins out of a safe-deposit box at a Torrance bank and exchange them with a commodities broker for an expected profit of $17,000.

When his wife did not return, the lawsuit said, Benda “did not know whether she had been kidnaped with the gold by criminals, whether she was dead or whether she had just stolen his gold.”

Most of the coins were eventually returned, Benda said in an interview, but he said he lost about $8,000 that would have been made in a sale. Another $45,000 worth of the gold was never returned, he said.

A month after she took the coins, the suit alleges, Janet Benda “forcibly entered plaintiff’s home and by force removed plaintiff’s only pet, his cat. . . . Being a paraplegic, (he) had to watch and could do nothing.” The suit charges that Benda has been lonely and depressed and unable to sleep as a result of his wife’s actions.

Mrs. Benda acknowledged that she took the gold coins and the cat, named Sunday, but said she is not a thief.

“How can you steal your own money?” she asked. “After the accident happened, he first promised me a third of the money. . . . And then he wanted control of all the money.”

She said her husband never paid attention to the cat until she said she wanted it. “Then he made a big deal out of it, because I guess he knows I really love the cat,” she said.

Quit Job to Care for Him

Janet Benda wept as she described how she quit her job to care for her husband full time--bathing him, cooking for him, arranging medical care and running errands.

“I was there every day to help him,” she said.

Benda said he is continuing to adapt to his injuries and feels “pretty good now.” He drives his own van, using a hand accelerator and brake, and swims a mile and a half a day in the pool of his rented Manhattan Beach home.