The California Department of Insurance and the State Compensation Insurance Fund are waiting for an appeals court to determine if the carrier can resume its challenge of the Department’s handling of a settlement agreement. State Fund contends CDI is violating the agreement by barring it from defending its prior rate filings in new disputes over …
In a ruling that affects how all appealed workers’ comp cases are handled in California, the Second District Court of Appeal says the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board’s long-standing “grant-for-study” practice …
State and federal courts gave a boost to the legal fights gig economy companies are waging against California’s ABC test for differentiating between independent contractors and employees. A state court of appeal revived the industry-backed initiative to create an exception to keep app-based delivery drivers classified as independent contractors. Then, the Ninth Circuit Court of …
The Third District Court of Appeal agrees that a lower court’s summary judgment for the Roseville Moose Lodge in its defense of a negligence claim filed by a contractor’s employee was correct. The court found the Privette doctrine protected the lodge and held the worker failed to show that any of the recognized exceptions to …
In The Kroger Company et al., v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board and George Velasquez, an unpublished opinion, the Second Appellate District reviewed a workers’ compensation judge’s award of vocational rehabilitation benefits to an individual under Labor Code §139.5. The petitioner, The Kroger Company dba Ralphs Grocery Co. (Ralphs), maintained that the repeal of this section, …
Arizona Appeals Court Rejects Attendant Care Claim The Arizona Court of Appeals rules that workers’ compensation insurance does not have to reimburse spouses of injured workers for special care they …
In spite of decisions that created rumblings that the governor’s reappointment of Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board commissioners James Cuneo and Frank Brass would face challenges when they came before the Senate Rules Committee for confirmation, no opposition emerged when that day arrived. The two commissioners were reconfirmed. Former Sen. John Burton presented Cuneo and Brass …
Could moving California’s workers’ comp appeals board system fully into the information age actually force providers and carriers back into a paper-based system? That was the fear expressed by many in the system at a recent hearing by the Assembly Insurance Committee to investigate the Division of Workers’ Compensation’s new $36 million Electronic Adjudicatory Management …