A Partner at Boxer & Gerson LLP, Julius Young has practiced worker’s compensation law and social security disability law since 1979. He has represented thousands of individuals who have sustained life-changing injuries or illnesses while on the job. In every case, his goal is to secure the medical treatments his clients need.
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to a large QME training course, sponsored by the California Orthopedic Association. Joined by WCJ Noah Tempkin and defense attorney William Tappin, the focus of my segment of the training panel, held at Orange County’s Ritz-Carlton Resort at Laguna Niguel, was on “Almaraz/Guzman: What Works and What Doesn’t […]
Under what circumstances can a Maximus Independent Medical Review Determination be appealed? Under Labor Code 4610.6(h), the grounds for appealing an IMR determination are very limited. Challenges to the constitutionality of the IMR statute are currently pending, but the odds seem long that California courts will reject the IMR statute altogether. So court decisions clarifying […]
The tides of the California’s workers’ comp system always come and go. It was recently announced that Ronnie Caplane, Chairperson of the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board was stepping down. Caplane has accepted a post at Zenith Insurance. In future posts there will be more time to appraise details of her legacy at the helm of the […]
Uber and the Boston-based plaintiff attorneys litigating O’Connor v. Uber Technologies have announced a settlement of the class action challenging the classification of Uber drivers as independent contractors. The settlement, which voids a summer trial, must be approved by U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen. While that may well happen, an attempted resolution of a class […]
Could utilization review physicians and UR provider companies face liability lawsuits filed by injured workers alleging they were damaged by the administration of the UR process? Perhaps. That appears to be possible under certain circumstances after a 2016 decision by the California Court of Appeal 4th District, Kirk King v. CompPartners (see link to the decision […]
Does California’s workers’ comp system lack sufficient tools to deal with abuse by avaricious medical providers? That’s a primary premise of a recent series by Christina Jewett, writing for The Center for Investigative Reporting. I’ve included links at the bottom of this post to three articles in the series which has been featured on Revealnews.org. […]
The cost of administering California workers’ comp benefits is starting to swamp the cost of the benefits the system delivers. That’s scary from a policy standpoint. Consider these figures: Not only did medical cost containment rose 272.9% from 2002 to 2013 but also The % of medical dollar spent on treatment decreases from 81.8% in […]