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Like any experienced music festival attendee, Michael Ryan, of Panama City Beach, Florida, purchased VIP tickets for the Gulf Coast Jam country music festival in 2014. That gave Ryan access to unlimited quantities of free alcohol in the VIP area. And like any experienced litigant, Ryan doesn’t explicitly admit to consuming any of that free [...]

A tragic limousine accident last weekend killed 17 passengers, the driver, and two pedestrians, rocked the small town of Schoharie, New York, and raised new questions about limo safety, licensing, and legal liability. According to reports, the modified 2001 Ford Excursion had recently failed a state safety inspection, the driver did not have the proper license to [...]

A Costco customer was hit by a steel rod while reaching for a package of paper towels, prompting a host of medical interventions. The 62-year-old North Salem, New York resident suffered irreversible brain damage at a Brookfield Costco in 2016, and has filed a federal lawsuit against the wholesale chain for monetary damages claiming unsafe, dangerous, or [...]

Each year the WCIRB prepares a report on California workers’ compensation losses and expenses during the preceding year. And each summer the WCIRB does a State of the System analysis. The workers’ comp system involves people, not just stats and charts. We must never lose sight of that, with the life story of injured individuals and [...]

The California Supreme Court has rendered a 4-3 decision in Hassell v. Bird (see link to the decision at the bottom of this post). This case may be of interest to attorneys, doctors, insurance brokers and other providers who service the California workers’ compensation system. We live in a mobile, internet world. Increasingly it seems that individuals [...]

Time flies. It has been six years since the passage of the 2012 workers’ comp reform package, SB 863. And it’s been two years since the WCIRB published a November 2016 dedicated research paper monitoring the costs of SB 863 (see link below). Data isn’t everything,. It is obvious but alway needs repeating. The workers’ [...]

Journalists at the Center for Investigative Reporting have recently published an analysis of alleged widespread safety issues at the Fremont, California plant where Tesla cars are built (see link to the article at the bottom of this post). In 2017 I posted on a Worksafe think-tank study analyzing Tesla’s safety record: http://www.workerscompzone.com/?s=Tesla The recent CIR report provides [...]

What is the effect on a claim for temporary disability or permanent disability if a worker self-procures treatment that was denied by utilization review and IMR? That was the question in a 2017 WCAB panel decision, Belinda Go v. Sutter Solano Medical Center (ADJ 10168011) . The result in Go stands, as both the California Court of Appeal and the California [...]

The California State Auditor recently released a December 2017 audit report on fraud in the California workers’ comp system. An unusual crossfire resulted, as the California Department of Insurance (the CDI) accepted the audit recommendations, but the Department of Industrial Relations disputed the recommendations, causing the State Auditor to fire back in rebuttal to the DIR’s response. [...]

Some of the most revered figures in American’s media and entertainment industry have recently been toppled by a wave of sexual harassment allegations. And those embroiled in this wave of misconduct allegations include politicians both left and right, Democrat and Republican. Sacramento has seen its share of these allegations. A large group of women who [...]