Handling Public Safety Cases in California
| Publication year | 2019 |
| Author | Alan B. Snitzer, Esq. Cynthia L. Collins, Esq. Pasadena, California |
Alan B. Snitzer, Esq. Cynthia L. Collins, Esq. Pasadena, California
California workers' compensation law affords special treatment to sworn public safety officers who are injured or killed in the line of duty. This category includes police officers, sheriff's deputies, firefighters and paramedics, Highway Patrol officers, University of California police officers, district attorney investigators, corrections officers, probation officers, special agents for the California Department of justice, state firefighters for the California Department Of Forestry (Cal Fire), and even, in some cases, lifeguards and animal control officers. This list is hardly exhaustive; these special laws and policies can also cover many other types of public safety officers at the state, county, and local levels.
This article is a primer on the common issues presented for handling workers' compensation cases for public safety officers.
Most public safety personnel are initially given "injured on duty" (IOD) pay when injured on the job and temporarily disabled, rather than the more limited temporary total disability (TTD) benefits paid to civilians. Labor Code section 4850 provides for full, tax-free salary for up to one year, in the aggregate, as IOD pay for most local and county safety officers. Most state officers, agents, and firefighters receive their IOD pay pursuant to Labor Code section 4800, while California Highway Patrol officers receive their IOD benefits under Labor Code section 4800.5. However, certain charter cities, like Los Angeles, provide that their sworn employees receive only 91 percent of their salary while on IOD status, as the City retains the remaining 9 percent for the officers' and firefighters' pension contribution. This is still far more generous in most cases that the regular TTD rate.
Under the current two-year limitation by Labor Code section 4656 on TTD benefits, safety officers receive IOD pay for the first year of total temporary disability and regular TTD benefits for the second year of disability. However, if the officer or firefighter later receives a service-connected disability pension (also known as Industrial Disability Retirement, or IDR) because they are substantially incapacitated (as defined in Government Code section 20026) from performing their usual duties, they are required to repay any TTD benefits to the employer because the effective date of the IDR is typically the end of IOD pay.
When permanent disability is calculated for safety officers, they have the distinct advantage of being rated by the Disability Evaluation Unit (DEU) at one of the highest occupational group levels, 490, which represents very arduous labor. Firefighters carry a great deal of very heavy equipment, and when fighting a high-rise fire, for example, they must walk up many flights of stairs, often carrying 100 pounds of equipment.
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Police officers wear a duty belt for 40 or more hours a week that weighs about 30 pounds. They often have to run, climb, walk on uneven terrain, or engage in altercations while wearing this and other heavy gear. A police officer would receive an occupational variant of "I" (the second-highest category of variant) for most orthopedic and internal injuries (back, neck, knees, shoulders, heart, hypertension, and so on). Lawyers, however, would only receive a variant of "C" (the lowest category) for most orthopedic injuries. However, for any type of mental incapacity, brain injury, cognitive impairment, or psychiatric stress, police and fire would receive an occupational variant of "J" (the highest possible adjustment), but so would attorneys. Public safety officers are also rated at "J" for scarring or disfigurement, presumably because it would be harder to do one's job in dealing with the public (or compete for another public...
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