Maligned Judges Bear Reform Burden : Courts: Success of workers’ comp overhaul depends on officials whom some critics call a big part of the problem.

They are so ill-regarded as a group that the California Legislature, partly out of spite, voted to downgrade their state job titles.

Some are being investigated for allegedly accepting expense-paid trips and other improper gifts and speaking fees. Even many of the best regarded among their ranks labor under crushing workloads in cramped offices cluttered with stacks of files.

Yet these officials--the administrative law judges who rule California’s workers’ compensation courts--now shoulder much of the burden for carrying out the historic legislative reforms adopted this month for the state’s troubled workers’ compensation system.

“They’ve never been more crucial,” said Stanley R. Zax, chairman of Zenith Insurance of Woodland Hills and an influential figure in Sacramento.

To make the overhaul work well, Zax and other observers say, the judges must abandon the business-as-usual attitude in the courts that plagued past efforts to reform California’s system for aiding injured workers.

For starters, critics say, the system’s 176 judges must try more cases, issue more rulings and apply the new statutes diligently. Judges, they complain, have too frequently cut corners--often by pressuring disputing sides to reach settlements instead of trying to root out abuses or ensuring that injured workers receive proper benefits.

The result, the argument goes, is that the system--and its entrenched abuses--go on as usual.

For their part, the judges portray themselves as hard-working public servants who have so little clerical help that they often type their own decisions and say they could earn far more if they left their jobs for private legal practices. The judges also say they are being wrongly blamed for the ethical misdeeds of a few and are unfairly tarnished by problems outside their control.

It does not always look that way, however, to people such as Jerry Hays, the former owner of a Studio City gas station. Two years ago, Hays, convinced that one of his former mechanics was trying to bilk his workers’ compensation insurance company with a bogus injury case, asked a judge to throw out the claim.

But, Hays said, the judge’s mind “was already made up” in favor of having the insurer pay the claim. The judge said: “What do you care? It’s not your problem. It’s the insurance company’s problem,’ ” Hays recalled.

Critics say the chumminess and informality in the workers’ compensation legal community also may lead some judges to bend rules and favor their friends; many lawyers privately complain that ex parte conversations--where judges discuss a case with an attorney without the opposing counsel present--are commonplace even though officially banned.

State lawmakers who crafted the reform package--which is intended to cut costs for employers and increase benefits for injured workers--express concerns about ethical lapses by judges and, in some cases, their lack of training. Some legislators have concerns about whether the jurists will effectively apply the new laws.

“I’m confident they are (capable), but I’ll be watching them,” said state Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Upland), the legislator who inserted a clause into the reform package reducing the jurists’ official titles from “judge” to “referee.”

Leonard said he wanted the title change to convey to the public that workers’ compensation jurists hold civil service jobs and, unlike other types of judges, are neither elected nor appointed by the governor. But he also indicated that his frustration with the performance of the judges played a role.

“If everything is implemented properly and the system is turned around, I’m prepared to revisit the issue (of job titles) a year or two from now,” Leonard said.

Meanwhile, to deal with concerns about the judges and the court system, lawmakers are expected to approve a bill next month that would impose new ethics rules and training requirements. They also may consider adding more judges, even though the courts’ burdens are expected to be relieved by reforms designed to deter claims for psychiatric stress and minor physical injuries.

Alan Eskenazi, president of the Conference of California Workers’ Compensation Judges, said the court system is particularly strained and in need of more staff in litigious Southern California. Yet, he said, the vast majority of the judges perform their jobs admirably anyway.

“The fact they’re taking this shot at us doesn’t mean we’ll act any less judicial,” said Eskenazi, referring to the Legislature’s vote to change the judges’ titles.

Further, he said, employers, insurers, injured workers and their lawyers bear much of the blame for the logjam in the courts, where cases sometimes are stuck for years. “A lot of the time they haven’t done their homework, and they think the judge will clean it up for them,” Eskenazi said.

Meanwhile, confidence in the system has been shaken by revelations of a state investigation into possible ethics violations by judges. Among other things, authorities are looking into a 1991 trip to Hawaii by four Orange County judges believed to have been arranged by a doctor who treats injured workers and whose bills sometimes need to be approved by the workers’ compensation courts.

At least two of the Orange County judges say they paid some or all of their expenses but authorities have yet to verify those claims, according to a state spokesman.

Critics say the judges have other potential conflicts. The head of the state court system and numerous other judges operate for-profit firms that conduct seminars about workers’ compensation law for doctors, lawyers and insurance claims adjusters. If the pending judicial ethics bill is passed, the practice would be restricted.

While many in the field say the seminars are a valuable educational service, others maintain that the practice can be coercive. They argue that people whose livelihoods hinge on decisions made by workers’ compensation courts may feel obligated to buy seminar tickets costing several hundreds of dollars to stay on good terms with the judges providing the programs.

The seminars also put some of the judges in business relationships with people whose cases come before the courts--possibly in violation of the California Code of Judicial Conduct, which governs workers’ compensation judges.

Two former Van Nuys judges--Lester B. Volchok and Clayton I. Robins--opened a seminar business about three years ago in partnership with a workers’ compensation doctor, Nachman Brautbar. All three involved say the firm closed down after one money-losing seminar.

Why did the judges go into business with a workers’ compensation doctor in the first place?

“When I took the (judge’s) job, the pay was reasonable. I wasn’t going to get rich on it, but I never planned to be a rich man,” said Robins, 61, who retired from the workers’ compensation bench in April after 18 1/2 years.

“As time went on, it (my pay) got behinder and behinder. So if I could find a way to supplement my income, fine, so long as it was in an honest, aboveboard manner.”

Regular workers’ compensation judges earn up to $79,080 a year, and the presiding judges in charge of the 27 district courts across the state earn up to $83,088.

Among those who have been under scrutiny is Mark L. Kahn, the Van Nuys-based assistant chief of the Division of Workers’ Compensation and head of the state court system. He earned $70,000 last year from the seminar firm he owns with another judge at the Van Nuys court, Abel Shapiro.

The firm is operated from the offices of a separate business, Lien Services collection agency, whose bills sometimes must be approved by the workers’ compensation courts. The president of Lien Services, Linda Yamamoto, receives 20% of the profits of the Kahn-Shapiro seminar firm for handling its phone calls and taking care of its other office work.

Kahn said he has avoided any conflict by recusing himself from cases involving Lien Services. At the same time, Kahn said it is important for judges to avoid “the appearance of impropriety,” and for that reason he has urged judges to turn down such things as free meals and tickets to ballgames from law firms.