The Division of Workers’ Compensation is moving forward with a formal proposal to give the state’s qualified medical evaluators (QMEs) a 25% pay raise – their first pay increase in well over a decade. Informal drafts previously circulated for public comment are highly controversial, generating hundreds of pages of comments. The formal proposal maintains much …
The Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board is ordering a judge to take a fresh look at letters an applicant attorney sent to an agreed medical evaluator to determine if they were mere “communications” or actually provided “information” to the AME. The distinction is important as the latter must be agreed to by both parties and in …
The Second District Court of Appeals is refusing to hear an employer’s challenge to the admissibility of an agreed medical evaluator’s report in a workers’ comp claim finding in which there has been no final order or decision by the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board to appeal. The court’s opinion runs counter to another decision from …
by William J. Armstrong, Esq. & Owen C. Fennern, Esq. In our system, it has been common for an employer to overpay temporary disability, due to no fault of the payer. As one illustration, if weekly indemnity is being paid pending an AME or QME, it often times takes that doctor 30-60 days to …
Difficult applicant or not, the California Insurance Guarantee Association should not have cut off the services of a nurse case manager to one of its covered claimants. That’s the word from the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board in a significant panel decision penned by newly appointed Commissioner Katherine Zalewski. The case, Patterson v. The Oaks Farm/CIGA, stems …
Workers’ compensation defense attorneys are hailing a recent Second District Court of Appeals decision that reels in the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board’s overzealous application of California jurisdiction to claims by out-of-state professional athletes. The ruling overturns a WCAB decision to retain jurisdiction over a workers’ comp cumulative trauma (CT) claim filed by a former Women’s …
A California Court of Appeal is ordering the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (WCAB) to revisit a case where it ignored evidence that much of an injured worker’s permanent disability was non-occupational in nature and a significant portion of what was occupational stemmed from a prior injury. The court told the WCAB and workers’ comp judge …
Two bills dealing with supplemental job displacement benefit (SJDB) vouchers and utilization review continue on their way through the Legislature despite concerns by opponents that they are both administratively cumbersome and potentially expensive for employers. The fact that both bills are piecemeal approaches to workers’ comp also doesn’t sit well with the opposition as they …