Product Description
This renowned work features more than 6,000 case discussions and valuable advice from a leading authority in California workers’ compensation law.
Since 1980, the late Judge Sheldon St. Clair’s California Workers’ Compensation Law & Practice has been the “go to” resource when tough questions arise.
California Workers’ Compensation Law & Practice provides start-to-finish guidance – over 1,400 pages – on readying and trying your case. You receive detailed explanations of procedures, strategies for circumventing traps and maximizing opportunities, solutions to common problems, and governing law for:
Determination of medical issues
- The AME/QME process
- Required notices
- Formal medical evaluation procedures
- Reports of medical evaluations
- Recovery of medical-legal costs
- Filing or serving reports
- Medical records
- Pre-trial discovery
Trial
- Setting for trial
- Expedited hearings
- Mandatory settlement conference
- Notices
- Disqualification of WCJs
- Arbitration process
- NIT procedures
Judgments
- Finding and award or order
- Interest and cost
- Lien claim procedures
- Credit, restitution, commutation
- Enforcement of awards
REVISION 17 HIGHLIGHTS
This edition keeps you up-to-date with hundreds of new cases and new text in all 24 chapters covering these and many other topics:
NEW LAWS
- LC §2750.3 codifies the California Supreme Court’s decision in Dynamex Operations v. Superior Court
applying the ABC test on employment to eligibility for workers’ compensation benefits beginning July 1,
2020, but exempting many occupations and service providers.
- LC §3212.15 creates a legal presumption of injury for certain firefighters and peace officers who claim to
suffer a post-traumatic stress disorder.
NEW RULES
- Effective January 1, 2020, the Rules of Practice and Procedure have been reorganized, renumbered,
and modernized.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
- What constitutes a “catastrophic injury” for purposes of LC §4660.1(c).
- Requirements for lien declarations pursuant to LC §4903.8.
- Petitions for medical information by non-physician lien claimants.
- Dismissal of lien for failure to appear.
- Objections to necessity of medical-legal expense.
- Statute of limitations for petitions for serious and willful misconduct benefits.
- Commissioner’s conferences.
- Good faith effort to resolve liens no longer required.
- Standing to set aside a compromise and release agreement.
- Interpreter fees for applicant to understand C&R agreement.
- Amended orders approving compromise and release.
- Claim application form and filing and service procedures.
- Regulation of non-attorney representatives including notice of representation requirements.
- Substitution and dismissal of attorney and non-attorney representatives.
- Establishing the date of cumulative trauma injury for purposes of the statute of limitations.
- Obtaining a QME panel in a different specialty.
- Ex parte communication with AME or QME.
- Function of Conference WCJ.
- Examples of final orders from which reconsideration may be sought; hybrid orders.
AND MORE!
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION
Chapter 2 JURISDICTION
Chapter 3 THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP
Chapter 4 INJURY
Chapter 5 COURSE OF EMPLOYMENT (TIME AND PLACE)
Chapter 6 ARISING OUT OF EMPLOYMENT (CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP)
Chapter 7 TEMPORARY DISABILITY
Chapter 8 PERMANENT DISABILITY
Chapter 9 MEDICAL BENEFITS
Chapter 10 LIENS AND MEDICAL-LEGAL COST PETITIONS
Chapter 11 DEATH BENEFITS
Chapter 12 PENALTIES: INCREASED AND REDUCED COMPENSATION ON ACCOUNT OF FAULT
Chapter 13 INSURANCE: SECURING LIABILITY FOR COMPENSATION
Chapter 14 THE DELIVERY SYSTEM: ADMINISTRATIVE SUPERVISION; NOTICE REQUIREMENTS; AUDIT PROCEDURES; ANTI-FRAUD LEGISLATION; INJURY PREVENTION PROGRAMS; INFORMATION AND ASSISTANCE PROGRAM; NEW SB 863 ORGANIZATIONS
Chapter 15 SETTLEMENTS: COMPROMISE AND RELEASE, AND STIPULATED FINDINGS & AWARD
Chapter 16 CLAIM FILING PROCEDURE, PLEADINGS, VENUE AND DISMISSAL
Chapter 17 ATTORNEYS AND REPRESENTATIVES
Chapter 18 STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS: ORIGINAL FILINGS AND REOPENINGS
Chapter 19 PREPARATION FOR TRIAL AND OTHER PRE-TRIAL MATTERS
Chapter 20 PRE-TRIAL DISCOVERY: DEPOSITIONS AND OTHER TECHNIQUES
Chapter 21 TRIAL SETTING AND TRIAL
Chapter 22 JUDGMENTS: POST TRIAL DISPOSITIONS, DECISIONS AND OTHER MATTERS (INTEREST, COSTS, LIEN CLAIMS, CREDIT, CLERICAL ERROR, ENFORCEMENT, COMMUTATION AND RESTITUTION)
Chapter 23 RECONSIDERATION AND REVIEW
Chapter 24 THIRD-PARTY SUITS
David L. Pollak is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Western State University, College of Law. He began his workers’ compensation career in 2000 as an associate attorney at the Law Offices of Finestone, Schumaker & Associates, a Southern California workers’ compensation firm representing injured workers. He subsequently worked beginning in 2004 as an associate attorney for the Law Offices of Adelson, Testan, Brundo, Novell & Jimenez, a national workers’ compensation firm representing employers, insurance companies and third party administrators. Since 2009, he has been a Workers’ Compensation Administrative Law Judge at the Van Nuys District Office of the WCAB. He has been a featured speaker for various educational seminars hosted by WorkCompCentral and was awarded its Judicial Officer of the Year for 2014. Judge Pollak has been a member of the LexisNexis® California WCAB Noteworthy Panel Decisions Advisory Board since 2011.
Roger A. Tolman, Jr. is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of San Diego School of Law. He has been a workers’ compensation judge since June 2001 and works at the Los Angeles Office. Prior to that, he worked at Mastagni, Holstedt & Chiurazzi representing applicants including state workers, law enforcement personnel, and others. He has worked for both applicant and defense firms and has worked in both southern and northern California. He is also involved in continuing education of judges, especially in regards to use of the Division of Workers Compensation’s EAMS computer system.
Monika R. Reyes is a graduate of California State University Hayward and Santa Clara University School of Law. She has been a workers’ compensation judge since 2005, first with the Riverside District Office and then the Pomona District Office where she has been since 2006. Prior to state service, she worked as a paralegal before becoming an attorney for the Law Offices of Ellen Wakeley, representing applicants in Northern California
Former Authors:
Daniel A. Dobrin is a graduate of Cowell College, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. He began his workers’ compensation career in 1977 as a staff attorney with State Compensation Insurance Fund. During the 1980s, he worked as a criminal appellate attorney handling, among other matters, the defense of the “Billionaire Boys’ Club” case. He subsequently was an attorney and partner with Kegel, Tobin and Truce, a Southern California workers’ compensation defense firm. Since 2004, he has been a Workers’ Compensation Judge at the Los Angeles District Office of the WCAB. Judge Dobrin is a former member of the Pomona Cultural Arts Commission, and founder of the Pomona Film Festival.
Richard L. Newman is a graduate of Antioch College and the University of California, Hastings College of Law. In September of 2011, he was appointed Chief Judge for the Division of Workers’ Compensation. Prior to working for the state, Mr. Newman worked as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Labor and in private practice, representing injured workers. In 1991, Mr. Newman began working as counsel to the Administrative Director of California Workers’ Compensation F-4 the Division of Workers’ Compensation. From 1995 to 2011, he worked as a Workers’ Compensation Judge in the San Francisco District Office, where he was appointed Presiding Judge in 2009. He has served on the board of the Conference of California Workers’ Compensation Judges and has served as an advisor to the Executive Committee of the Workers’ Compensation Section of the State Bar of California.
Alexander Wong is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, and University of California at Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law. He is a certified specialist in Workers’ Compensation law. After working as a workers’ compensation defense attorney for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, he went into private practice as an applicant’s attorney and now is a partner at Jones, Clifford, Johnson, Dehner, Wong, Morrison, Sheppard and Bell. In 2001, he served as the chair of the Executive Committee of the Workers’ Compensation Section of the State Bar of California. He is the former chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, and a former Regent of the University of California.
Sheldon St. Clair graduated from Gettysburg College in 1952 and from the University of California Law School (Boalt Hall) in 1958. He served as law clerk to Justice Raymond E. Peters on the California Court of Appeal and Supreme Court from 1958 through 1959. In 1964, Mr. St. Clair was appointed associate counsel to the then Industrial Accident Commission, and in 1966 he was appointed Workers’ Compensation Judge of the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. Mr. St. Clair served as Deputy Commissioner of the WCAB in San Francisco from 1970 through 1974, and as a Workers’ Compensation Judge assigned to Van Nuys from 1974 through 1994, when he retired from state service. Mr. St. Clair passed away in October 2007.
