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Plaintiff Gets Second Chance In Workplace Covid-19 Case

The Second District Court of Appeal is reversing a lower court’s decision and allowing a case alleging a work-related COVID-19 death case to continue. The employee’s widow maintains that the workers’ compensation exclusive remedy provision does not block the case because the employer fraudulently concealed a COVID-19 outbreak at an employee housing unit where her … Read More »

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Covid Bill Narrowed By Amendment

The Assemblyman behind a bill requiring employers to pay COVID-19-positive employees to stay home from work has narrowed the bill to apply only to school employees. Assemblyman Pilar Schiavo (D-Santa Clarita) adopted the amendment earlier this month, which taxpayers will pay for. As currently drafted, AB 3106 would require a school district, county office of … Read More »

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Covid-19 Claims To Count Against X-Mods

The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau’s Classification and Rating Committee voted to recommend updating the experience rating system to put Covid-19 claims into employers’ X-Mods. The experience from Covid-19 claims has never been included in the rating calculation, but that could change as of September 1, 2024. The Bureau is a private organization with quasi-governmental … Read More »

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Supreme Court Limits Third-Party Covid-19 Litigation Against Employers

The California Workers’ Compensation Act’s exclusivity provision does not prohibit lawsuits by employees’ family members alleging employer negligence for a take-home case of Covid-19. But the California Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision employers do not owe a duty of care to prevent the spread of the virus to family members living in an … Read More »

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Will California Expand Employers’ Duty Of Care

The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could create a new liability for employers. It could hold employers liable for secondhand or derivative injuries to an employee’s family and others. Employers warn of an “avalanche of litigation” if the court so determines, while the plaintiff’s attorneys maintain that burden of proof … Read More »

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Are Missing Covid-19 Costs Significant?

The Covid-19 pandemic introduced a host of anomalies into workers’ comp claim data, but one of the more puzzling has been the high percentage of indemnity-only claims linked to the virus. Typically, indemnity-only claims are relatively rare and account for less than 2% of all workers’ comp claims, but among the Covid-19 claims, they amount … Read More »

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Pandemic Brings Down Workers’ Comp’s Cost and Benefit Ratios

Employers across the country saw an 8.5% reduction in the average cost of workers’ compensation during the Covid-19 pandemic. California employers saw a more significant cost decrease but still paid far more than employers in all but six other states. A new study by the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) shows that the nationwide … Read More »

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Bureau On Covid: “We’re In The Endemic Period Now”

Persistently low rates of new claims for Covid in California’s workers’ comp system have analysts at the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau finally agreeing that we have transitioned from the pandemic phase of the virus to the endemic phase. After accounting for nearly 40% of all workers’ comp indemnity claims filed in January amid a … Read More »

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