WCDefenseCA

Alrighty dear readers – your humble blogger has a question for you.

What, pray tell, are your plans for right after thanksgiving.  Do you plan on sharpening your pitchforks?  Are you going to be re-binding and re-oiling your torches?  Do you plan to grumble vague angry sounds as you coalesce into an unruly mob not unlike the following?

Well, so long as you promise that the answer to all of these is an honest “no” I can report to you that the Department of Workers’ Compensation is holding an in person hearing on December 6, 2022 at 10:00 a.m.

As you can see in this announcement all stakeholders, “including insurers, attorneys, employers, injured workers and health care providers” are invited to share their thoughts on how to improve all aspects of the workers’ compensation system.

Your humble blogger’s first suggestion?  Stop making in-person the default.  Travel in urban areas has become extremely tolling on the time budget when traveling by car, and exceedingly dangerous when traveling by public transit.  Remote hearings, depositions, trials, and town halls are well within the scope of feasibility and would be a good start to providing accessibility to the community.  Your humble blogger’s office is in the Peninsula just south of San Francisco, but there are countless stake holders all over the state for whom Oakland is not realistically accessible.

What are your suggestions for improving the workers’ compensation system, dear readers?

Mind you, the DWC is not going to be able to implement any rule or regulation contrary to the labor code, so if your suggestion is to ban cumulative traumas or provide “pain and suffering” damages in workers’ comp, you’re probably barking up the wrong proverbial tree, as it were.

Your humble blogger would like to see a refresh on all forms: minutes of hearing, order approving C&R, pre-trial conference statement, stipulations, C&R, etc.

Your humble blogger would also like the walkthroughs to move back to remote appearance, and the trials to be set to default remote hearings absent good cause to have the trial in person.

As a defense attorney who is referred walkthroughs of settlement paperwork all over the state, it would be nice to have uniform rules.  For example, some venues put a cap on how many walkthroughs will be heard on a particular morning – your humble blogger can find no authority for such a limitation in the labor code of the rules and regulations.  Others want a waiver of the right to QME in writing, while some are satisfied with a notice of the right to a QME.

Another improvement your humble blogger would like to see is more stringent enforcement of the rules requiring parties to meet and confer BEFORE a hearing.  There is already such a requirement prior to filing a DOR, and there is pandemic-era rule requiring such efforts before an MSC.  It is rare enough that your humble blogger sees these requirements enforced and would like to see more of it.

All these suggestions, though solid gold if you ask the author to evaluate them, will fall on deaf ears unless your humble blogger braves the traffic, the violent crime, and the car break-ins to deliver them in a five minute burst of oratory. What do you say dear readers – do you plan on attending and making your voices heard?  Your humble blogger’s bow tie is shimmering in anticipation.

Have a great weekend!