Hello, dear readers!
Your humble blogger wants you to quickly check your calendar – do you have an upcoming lien conference or trial with Professional Lien Services, Inc.? Well, about that…
In its first, and possibly only, En Banc decision of the year, the WCAB has issued a notice of intention to suspend appearance privileges of Professional Lien Services. Back in August of 2013, a WCJ ordered Professional Lien Services to pay a court sanction of $1,000, and to pay the defense costs of $2,355, for “pursuing a trial on the issues of penalty and interest when it did not offer evidence at the trial adequate to meet its initial burden of proof.”
Two years later, despite repeated efforts by the WCAB and defendant to get paid, the sanctions remain unpaid, and the WCAB appears to have had enough.
How often do you have to deal with this, dear readers? Have you ever had a lien claimant threaten a baseless trial for the sole purpose of getting the defense to run up its bills? “Pay me, or you’ll have to pay your attorney and keep your file open.”
In any case, dear readers, if you do have a hearing with PLS, you might expect to get stood up. On the other hand, this isn’t such a bad thing – if the lien claimant has to scramble to get a last-minute lien representative, it may not have time to satisfy the requirements of Rule 10774.5(e)(4), which requires a non-attorney lien representative to have a Notice of Representation signed by the lien claimant – without this, the defense could move for dismissal for failure to appear.
The Order and NOI gives them 20 days to appeal. I suspends them for 90 days but notes reinstatement will happen ONLY if they comply with the orders to pay sanctions and costs.
They are suspended from “appearing before the WCAB”.
However, it does not say they are suspended from representing medical providers or making calls to try and negotiate liens. I just got a phone message from them yesterday.
I’m not sure if this acts like an attorney being suspended from all practice of law so they shouldn’t be making calls or if they as suspended only from “appearing” at the WCAB.
Just a thought.
Arlene Lea
Those are good points. However, given that they’ve had two years to pay the original amounts ordered by the WCJ, well… I’m always happy to be surprised by unexpected events.
As for the rest, in theory it would be possible for them to negotiate the liens, but why would any lien claimant hire a lien representative that will have to bow out should the matter proceed to trial or a hearing? I think the lien rep will have a hard time competing with the full spectrum services out there.