Note from the Editor

• Publication year: 2019
• Author: Randy Pollak, Esq.

Note from the Editor

Randy Pollak, Esq.

Thousand Oaks, California

Welcome to the Volume 32, No. 2, issue of the Quarterly! I hope you all are enjoying your summer.

Our workers' compensation community has seen some important legal decisions in the last few months. In May the WCAB issued its en banc decision in Kris Wilson v. State of California (2019) 84 Cal.Comp.Cases 393, which comprehensively addressed for the first time the "catastrophic injury" exception to the restriction on psychiatric permanent disability add-ons under Labor Code section 4660.1(c)(2)(B). The WCAB held that the analysis is a fact-driven inquiry that is to focus on the "nature of the injury" by reviewing various factors. The defendant subsequently challenged that holding with its own Petition for Reconsideration, which the WCAB en banc denied on July 15th of this year.

Also, in June, the Second District Court of Appeal published its decision regarding the WCAB's jurisdiction over a medical treatment dispute in Allied Signal v. WCAB (Wiggs) 35 Cal.App.5th 1077. The Court of Appeal rejected the WCAB's arguments that it had jurisdiction over the applicant's home health care request based on a prior agreement by the defendant to resolve a dispute by utilizing a nurse. The Court of Appeal held that the record did not support that this was an ongoing agreement for future requests, and therefore the current issue was subject to utilization review and independent medical review.

In this...