State Is Sued Over Workers’ Comp Rules

Injured workers and the lawyers who represent them sued the state of California on Wednesday in an effort to overturn recent state regulations that would cut benefit payments to permanently disabled workers.

The lawsuit, filed by VotersInjuredatWork.org and the Applicant Attorneys Assn., contends that the regulations reduce permanent-disability benefits by a much greater amount than lawmakers intended when they approved a sweeping overhaul of the state’s workers’ compensation system last spring.

The complaint asks a Sacramento Superior Court judge to issue an injunction, restraining the state from enforcing the new regulations.

“These are devastating reductions, and we do not believe they are permitted by the California Constitution,” said Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for the applicants’ attorneys, who represent injured workers in special Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board courts.

The attorneys’ and injured workers’ groups claim that benefits could be slashed by more than 50% under the new rules, which were drafted by Andrea Hoch, the administrative director of the state Division of Workers’ Compensation. Hoch and her agency are the defendants in the lawsuit.

The regulations, which took effect Jan. 1, are a key part of the complex revision of the legal and medical criteria used to prescribe treatment for on-the-job injuries and to award permanent disability benefits to compensate employees for lost wages.

Fixing the workers’ comp system was a major legislative goal for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year. Rick Rice, assistant secretary of the California Workplace and Development Agency, dismissed the lawsuit as “a desperate act” to slow implementation of the overhaul, just as it’s beginning to bring down sky-high workers’ comp insurance premiums.

Sen. Charles Poochigian (R-Fresno), the author of the 2004 workers’ compensation bill, said he wasn’t surprised that the applicants’ attorneys are involved in the suit. “These are the people who profit from the broken system, so it’s in their interest to undermine it,” he said.

Poochigian’s district office in Fresno was one of 19 government offices targeted by the new injured workers’ organization for protests Wednesday.

However, the biggest demonstration occurred in downtown Los Angeles. About 400 people rallied for about an hour in front of an office at a courthouse where administrative law judges hear workers’ compensation appeals cases.

At a simultaneous protest at the appeals board in Santa Ana, the president of VotersInjuredatWork.org, Mark Hayes, vowed that his organization “will fight to win back the right to choose our doctor, restore our benefits and punish fraud by insurance companies.”