Light Duty Offers and Return-to-Work Disputes in California Workers' Comp
A modified-duty offer can cut off temporary disability payments the moment the employer sends it, whether or not the work offered is actual…
Category
Workers' Comp
Workers' compensation in California — WCAB rulings, MPN/QME procedure, third-party PI coordination, and the practice-side of comp claims.
The Independent Contractor Injury Trap: Civil Claims When the Comp Bar Falls Away
When a worker labeled an independent contractor is actually an employee under applicable law, the employer cannot hide behind the workers'…
Life Care Planning in Catastrophic Workers' Comp Cases: Building the Future-Damages Record
In catastrophic workers' comp injuries, the life care plan is the document that frames every negotiation over future medical costs, MSA pri…
Occupational Disease Claims: Building Industrial Causation
Occupational disease claims differ from traumatic injury claims in how causation is established and how the medical record is developed. Th…
Temporary Disability Benefit Disputes in California Workers' Comp
California temporary disability benefits are more frequently disputed than they should be, and the rules governing their calculation, payme…
Clearing the Psychiatric Injury Threshold Under Labor Code 3208.3
California Labor Code 3208.3 imposes requirements on psychiatric injury claims that have no counterpart in physical injury cases. Understan…
Winning the Cumulative Trauma Claim Against Successive Employers
A working playbook for proving AOE/COE on wear-and-tear injuries, pinning the correct date of injury, and beating the post-termination and…
Winning the Firefighter Cancer Presumption: Burden-Shifting for Safety Members
Statutory presumptions convert a firefighter's cancer diagnosis from a contested causation fight into an employer's burden to rebut. Here i…
Winning Treatment Authorization Through UR and IMR in Comp
A practitioner's guide to surviving utilization review and independent medical review: the timelines that kill defective denials, how to bu…
The Serious-and-Willful Penalty Comp Practitioners Leave Behind
The serious-and-willful misconduct penalty raises a comp award by half and cannot be insured against. It goes unclaimed because of workflow…
The SIBTF Recovery Comp Practitioners Keep Missing
For the worker who arrived at the industrial injury already disabled, California's Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund can be the large…
The Going-and-Coming Rule and the Exceptions That Reopen Coverage
A claim that looks dead on the going-and-coming defense is often alive once you develop how and why the worker was traveling. The exception…