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New developments in the UCLA lab death of Sheri Sangji

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

We’ve previously posted about the death of chemical research assistant Sheri Sangji, who was killed as a result of a 2008 UCLA laboratory fire. She was working with a dangerous chemical that ignited when exposed to air. Her terrible burns proved fatal some 18 days after the accident.
After numerous investigations, UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran (her supervisor) and the UC Board of Regents faced felony charges for three counts each of willfully violating occupational health and safety standards. These charges sent shock waves through university labs throughout the country since this was the first time that a U.S. professor ever faced a felony charge in relation to the death of a lab worker.
Last week, felony charges were dropped against UC regents after a plea deal in which the University agreed to implement a comprehensive safety program and to establish a $500,000 scholarship in Sangji’s name. The University will provide enhanced safety training and protective equipment across all its campuses.
Professor Patrick Harran’s case was continued until September to allow his defense to prepare a challenge to the credibility of the chief California OSH investigator. As the LA Times puts it, “Proceedings against a UCLA chemistry professor in the death of a lab worker take a strange turn when the defense alleges state investigator committed murder as a teen.” It’s a pretty bizarre development, one that is under much discussion in the scientific community. See Facing felony charges in lab death of Sheri Sangji, UCLA settles, Harran stretches credulity.
For ongoing developments in this case, we point you to the ongoing blog postings — 42 as of today — of Chemjobber on the Sheri Sangji case. Not only does Chemjobber provide excellent informed commentary and links to a variety of sources, his postings also include interesting comments from others in the scientific community, from both private industry and university labs.
In the wake of this tragic accident which has had widespread coverage, safety in university labs had really been under scrutiny. Despite the vast scope of academic research, it has largely been unregulated. This case may be the turning point in ushering in a new era of a “culture of safety.”
Below, a good video that the Chemical Safety Board issued in response to this and other two other tragic accidents that occurred in university labs.

CSB Key lab safety lessons and recommendations

  • Ensure that research specific hazards are evaluated and then controlled by developing specific written protocols and training
  • Expand existing laboratory safety plans to address physical hazards of chemicals
  • Ensure that safety personnel report to a university official who has the authority to oversee research laboratories and implement safety improvements
  • Document and communicate all laboratory near-misses and incidents

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Follow-up on the death of Sheri Sangji: a painful path to academic lab safety

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

In March, UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran and the UC Board of Regents will be facing an ordeal they likely never anticipated: a court arraignment on felony charges related to a 2008 laboratory fire that killed Sheri Sangji. They face three counts each of willfully violating occupational health and safety standards. According to the Los Angeles Times, the charges are thought to be the first stemming from an academic lab accident in the United States.
By way of background: In December 2008, Sheri Sangji was working with t-butyl lithium, a substance that ignites on contact with air. A drop spilled on her clothing causing an instant conflagration. She suffered second and third degree burns over 40% of her body, and died 18 days after the fire. In the wake of this accident, Cal/OSHA imposed a $31,875 penalty, citing safety lapses and lack of training. (Chemjobber has followed this case diligently . See all his posts on the Sheri Sangji case, with the most recent at the top.)
UCLA officials call the recent criminal charges outrageous, saying this was a tragic accident and Sangji had been trained to do the dangerous work she was doing. But a 95-page Cal-OSHA investigative report contradicts that defense, saying Sangji was neither experienced nor well trained, terming the risk “foreseeable,” and stating that the death was preventable had Sangji worn appropriate clothing. Further, “The report states that UCLA, by repeatedly failing to address previous safety lapses, had “wholly neglected its legal obligations” to provide a safe environment in campus labs and that Harran was personally responsible.”
In the wake of Sangji’s death, we posted about this tragic incident a few times. First, we raised the issue of why university labs aren’t safer, suggesting, among other things, that lab safety be added as a criteria of evaluation for federal funding sources. We got some push back from commenters who thought that such a suggestion was naive and that health and safety personnel were unqualified to oversee “exotic” scientific protocols. We followed with a response to these criticisms, as well as provided links to other articles and places where the death was being discussed by students, scientists, private lab workers and safety professionals. (See More on the
UCLA lab death of Sheri Sangji.)
While Harran and UCLA are facing charges, this is apparently not a random or isolated incident. In December, Beryl Lieff Benderly of Science Careers posted Taken for Granted: A Blueprint for Safety Action Now. Here’s an excerpt:

Issued in October, a CSB report entitled Texas Tech University: Laboratory Explosion lays out in 23 pages of straightforward, nontechnical language what went wrong in a near-fatal 2010 incident on the Lubbock campus and what needs to be done to prevent anything like it from happening again.

The report goes far beyond the usual accident investigation’s list of technical mishaps. It views the maiming of Texas Tech University (TTU) graduate student Preston Brown not as an isolated series of individual errors but as the predictable outcome of a culture, set of values, and system of organization prevalent not only at TTU but also at many other campuses. Having collected at least “preliminary information” on 120 other such incidents, CSB declares itself “greatly concerned about the frequency of academic laboratory incidents in the United States.”

Academia has evaded some of the scrutiny that private employers face in safety standards. The issue of lab safety still sparks controversy. Many still think that the environment is too exotic and too specialized to incorporate safety standards and that regulations would stifle creative research work. That’s little more than obfuscation and foot dragging. Lieff Benderly posted another article Taken for Granted: How to Live With Danger outlining the contrast between chemical laboratory safety and that of another industry, airlines.
In The Sharp Knife of a Short Life, the blog Chembank frames the issues well:

“Changing the culture of an institution–especially one as intractable as chemical academia–is extraordinarily difficult. But so long as we forgo meaningful changes in favor of cosmetic ones that we don’t even bother to sustain anyway, we will continue to experience frustration and tragedy. One wonders what magnitude of disruption is necessary for our community to commit itself to improvement. Apparently, it is much greater than the death of a twenty-something student.”

We repeat a comment that we made in 2009:

Some workplaces come by safety voluntarily with a commitment from the top. Other employers – even generally well meaning employers – don’t truly embrace safety until they have had paid some very steep price. Sometimes that price is a gut-wrenching human one, as when a worker dies; other times, the toll is purely economic, in high workers comp costs, ruinous lawsuits, and bad publicity. Unfortunately, money is often the best change agent. That, and the push provided by standards and enforcement under OSHA.

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A Window Into Fraud

Monday, February 13th, 2012

A couple of years ago we blogged the performance incentive program at Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation in California. The performance numbers were stellar, but not necessarily because the work was performed safely. Instead, the company conspired with local medical providers to secure limited treatment outside of the workers comp system. Two supervisors pled no contest in conspiring to deny comp benefits to injured workers.
With the recent conviction of chiropractor Robert Schreiner, we see into the black box of the conspiracy. Workers complaining of work-related problems were referred to doctors like Schreiner – giving rise, alas, to a new and ominous definition of provider network. In one instance a worker complained about a neck and shoulder injury. Schreiner denied that the problem was work related, saying that it was caused by carrying a back pack as a child. He provided a handful of treatments and then encouraged the worker to file the claim under his health plan to continue treatments. When the worker persisted and filed a comp claim, he was fired.
Schreiner is headed to jail to serve a mostly symbolic sentence of 30 days, to be followed by three years of probation. Perhaps he can provide some adjustments to his fellow inmates. Confined spaces sure can mess up the spine.
Faking Safety
Smurfit-Stone was bought out last year by RockTenn. You can still read about the company in Wikipedia. Here is the (unattributed) description of the company’s safety program:

Smurfit-Stone has been an industry leader in safety performance since 2001 [NOTE: the conspiracy to under-report claims began in 1999!]. In 2007, Smurfit-Stone’s U.S. operations had an OSHA recordable case rate of 1.05, the best in company and industry history. This represents an 84 percent improvement in the company’s recordable case rate since the implementation of Smurfit-Stone’s SAFE process in 1995.The SAFE process, which stands for Smurfit-Stone Accident-Free Environment, promotes five core beliefs:
1.All injuries are preventable
2.Safety is everyone’s responsibility
3.Working safely is a condition of employment
4.Training employees to work safely is essential
5.Safety is good business

As litigation has proven, Smurfit-Stone’s low OSHA case rate has less to do with safety than with a conspiracy to under-report claims. Perhaps the SAFE program stood for something else: Screw All Forsaken Employees. Aggressive safety goals are a good business practice; circumventing the workers comp system is not just a bad practice, it’s illegal. Just ask Robert Schreiber.

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“An unprotected trench is an open grave”

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

A little more than a week ago, family members and coworkers watched helplessly as 39-year old Raul Zapata was buried alive when a wall of dirt fell on him at a residential construction worksite in Milpitas, California. Zapata was working in a 12-foot deep ditch, the foundation of a 5,800 square foot home in a gated community. The cave in was extensive enough that it took two days to rescue his body. Zapata and his coworkers should not have been working at all that day because three days prior, the city had issued a stop work order to the construction company, U.S. Sino Investments Inc. The order was issued after a city building inspector determined that the ditch was a safety hazard due to a lack of adequate shoring to prevent a cave-in.

To add insult to injury, the employer did not have workers’ comp insurance. They also lacked a permit, a state requirement for any projects deeper than five feet. In a case of closing the barn door, the Contractors State License Board has since suspended U.S.-Sino Investment’s general building contractor license for this failure. The flouting of the stop work order, the failure to get a trenching permit and the failure to carry workers comp coverage – these are not unsurprising accompaniments to trenching fatalities. Fatalities are often preceded by multiple citations or warnings and violators are often serial violators. It’s not uncommon for OSHA to issue mulitple “willful” citations related to trenching failures. OSHA defines a willful violation as one “committed with an intentional disregard of, or plain indifference to” OSHA requirements, the highest level of citation, carrying fines of $5,000 to $70,000 per incident.

Two workers a month are buried alive in trench collapses. Most of these tragedies are avoidable simply by following OSHA standards, which mandate that all excavations 5 feet or deeper be protected against collapse. It’s a stroke of luck that no other workers were killed at the Milpitas site – it’s not uncommon for rescuers to rush to the aid of a victim and become entrapped themselves when an a secondary collapse occurs. Trench rescues require speed, precision, and expertise.

To help curtail fatalities that OSHA describes as “entirely preventable,” in October they released new trenching safety guidance, including the following safety materials:
Fact sheet: Trenching and Excavation (PDF)
Quick Card: Working Safely in Trenches (PDF)
Poster: An unprotected trench is an early grave (PDF)
OSHA – Confined Space

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California: Do Government Safety Programs Really Work?

Monday, January 30th, 2012

The Rand Corporation has published a study of California OSHA’s prevention programs, which are mandated by state law. Despite enough caveats to sink a battleship, the study does illuminate, if only for brief glimpses, a path for establishing truly effective safety and prevention programs.
History and Ideology
First, a little background on California OSHA. In the 1970s, the state as big as a country implemented its own OSHA inspection program. In 1987 a Republican governor trimmed the budget by eliminating CAL/OSHA, leaving the feds to take over the program. Gee, guess how that worked out…Two years later, CA took back the program. Over the next few years, the legislation evolved, resulting eventually in a requirement that all CA employers implement an Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP) with the following key elements:
– Identification of hazards and risks
– Training programs for employees in managing those risks
– Periodic hazard surveys to determine effectiveness of hazard mitigation
– Documentation of training and hazard surveys
IIPP being a state-sponsored program, state government had to train and disperse field inspectors to determine whether employers were in compliance. That raises two very big problems: first, the scale of the effort: with 700,000 employers in the state, inspectors can only perform about 8,000 inspections per year. Equally important, with limited time on site, inspectors lack the tools, training and time to measure the actual effectiveness of an employer’s IIPP.
Elements in Good Safety Programs
IIPPs mandate that employers implement the key elements of good safety programs:
– Workers know the employer’s point person for safety
– Workers know how to report hazards
– Workers with good safety records are rewarded
– workers with poor safety records are disciplined
– hazards and risks are analyzed on an ongoing basis
– identified hazards are mitigated in a timely manner
– training is ongoing
As any astute reader can surmise, there is a huge gap between developing a written program with the above elements and actually implementing it. A nice cottage industry arose in California, where employers could buy an IIPP program off the shelf – and promptly store the binder, unopened, on a shelf. A written program does not a safety program make.
Does the CAL/OSHA Program Work?
So what did the Rand researchers find? Does the CAL/OSHA program prevent injuries? Is it effective?
Well, sort of, kind of, not really, we’re not sure…
By the time you sort through the caveats – the impact of an unstable economy, the under-reporting of injuries by small employers, the lack of specificity in inspection visits, etc – you have very little conclusive evidence one way or the other. When visiting employers for the first time, inspectors consistently found that they were out of compliance, lacking written plans and evidence of an effective safety program. When making a second visit, especially after an injury, the results improved; there is nothing better than a serious injury to revitalize a safety program. Alas, two years after an inspection, there is no measurable lasting benefit to the program. [It is important to note, however, that unionized workforces had a more sustained and effective focus on safety than non-union environments – fodder for the ideologues, for sure.]
The Role of Government in Safety
The Rand study raises a number of compelling issues and is well worth the reading. In the final analysis, the study points out the limits of any state intervention. To be sure, inspectors could spend more time on site; they could do more qualitative analysis of the written documentation and interview a good sample of the workers. But these steps would still likely result only in incremental and relatively minor improvements.
We would all probably agree that a commitment by a company’s senior management is essential: safety must be a priority in all operations. We would also agree that the above key elements belong in any effective safety program. Finally, we all recognize that safety consciousness must be embedded into a company’s standard operating procedures.But that’s the ideal: what happens in the real world?
Where inspections reveal ineffective safety programs, where employers exploit workers and put them at risk, systematic fines and penalties are certainly in order. Such penalties are an effective means of getting an employer’s attention. Once you have that attention, it is at least feasible that employers will see the benefits of making safety a priority and eliminating workplace hazards. Government cannot make it happen, but without government, far too many employers would lack the motivation to maintain a safe workplace.
In the long run, effective safety programs are cheaper and more efficient – more profitable! – than a workplace fraught with unnecessary and unacceptable risks. At least, that’s the theory and a core belief of this blog. In practice these days, with predatory employment practices on the rise, one begins to wonder…

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Risk roundup, elephants in the room, dental claims, yelling as an essential function, and more

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

David Williams of Health Business Blog hosts the biweekly roundup of posts in the Insurance Fest Edition of Cavalcade of Risk. Check it out! Plus, poke around David’s blog – lots of good information, such as his recent posts on What does an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) actually explain and part 2.
The elephant in the room – Last week, my colleague reported on several issues and trends under discussion at the WCRI Conference. One of the key issues that has attracted some media attention is Richard Victor’s conference summary about the elephant in the room – employment. Insurance Journal’s Andrew Simpson has more on the tough challenges that face the workers’ comp system in the coming years as we cope with the “unprecedented disruption of the labor market.”
Ghosts of crises past… – Peter Rousmaniere recalls the workers comp crisis of 1991 private sector markets in some states came close to collapsing. He discusses ensuing legislative reforms and changes in employer and claims payer practices, which are are still making their impact known in today’s market.
Meanwhile, in England… – Jon Gelman notes that Britain’s Department of Work and Pensions has concluded that the principle of “no fault” should be eliminated from the workers’ comp system. “In a review published next week there are calls for a ‘rebalancing’ of safety laws and a dramatic reduction in the number of rules in the workplace.” Jon notes that our US system was modeled after Britain’s.
California Network Utilization Study – If California proves to be the national pacesetter that it so often is, look for network utilization to increase. According to a recent study by the California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI), the use of Physician Networks in California workers’ comp is at a record high. Network physicians now provide more than 75% of all first year physician-based treatment, and receive two thirds of the dollars paid for physician-based services rendered in the first year. You can download the full report (and other reports too) from the CCWI Research page.
Dental claims – If you think it’s difficult to find a physician who understands workers comp issues, how about a dentist? At Risk Management Magazine, Laura McClain explores some of the complexities involved in dental claims, such as the fact that the average dental claim requires 17 dental provider visits. She notes that risk managers generally rely on their PPOs to manage dental injuries, but suggests that because these claims require a more specialized approach, risk managers need to give them special attention.
Essential Functions – We couldn’t find a better example of why it’s important to document the essential functions of a job that the recent case that Jon Hyman Of Ohio Employers Law Blog discusses in his post, “SAY IT! SAY IT!” Yelling as an essential function. Hyman’s take away for employers: “Just because the ADA (as amended by the ADAAA) renders virtually every medical condition a protected disability does not render employers defenseless. Essential functions come in all shapes and sizes. When handling an accommodation request from a disabled employee, do not omit consideration of all facets of the job.”
US Road Casualties Mapped – Transportation related accidents are not only one of the leading causes of work-related fatalities in the US, they are one of the leading causes of death, period. Between 2001 and 2009, 369,629 people died on US roads. Now, courtesy of the Guardian’s Data Blog, you can see US traffic fatalities – every one mapped across America for those years on an interactive map. You can zoom in to search by your location. (Thanks to Liz Borowski at the always excellent Pump Handle for the pointer).
Cool Tool – NIOSH offers a Noise Meter shows how long it takes before a particular sound level becomes dangerous to the human ear. You can listen to the sounds and sound intensities of everyday objects. It’s an interesting little toy to share with workers to call attention to prevention efforts. Also see the other NIOSH resources on noise and hearing loss prevention.
Still an important health issue… – omorrow is World HIV-AIDS Day. The CDC has a good workplace resource: Business and Labor Responds to AIDS, which includes info on policy development, supervisory training materials, and educational materials.
News of Note

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Medical Marijuana in the Workplace: Dude, Lock Me Out!

Monday, February 7th, 2011

We have been tracking the hazardous effort to integrate medical marijuana into the workplace. It’s not an easy fit. The burden falls on legislators, who write the laws, and on judges, who interpret these laws. The testing ground is often California, where fantasy and reality are so intertwined, it’s getting more and more difficult to separate them.
We read in WorkCompCentral (subscription required) that a state senator named Mark Leno (any relation to Jay?) has introduced a bill to clarify the rights of medical marijuana users in the workplace. Senate Bill 129 gives workers a right to “damages, injunctive relief, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs…” if employment decisions are based upon their medical use of marijuana. Then Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill in 2008. Senator Leno is guessing he might have better luck with Governor Brown (AKA Governor Moonbeam).
Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, believes that legislation in necessary in order to assure equal rights for medical marijuana users who are not technically disabled: employers have an obligation to accommodate the disabled, but they may not view others the same way. “Under SB 129 you don’t have to be disabled, you simply have to be a medical marijuana patient.”
He goes on to say that Proposition 215 was not intended just for the unemployed: its protections must include workers in the workplace.
Ah, there’s the rub. How do you draw the line between drug free workplaces and medically approved use of marijuana (and, for that matter, opiates and other pain killers)?
Locked Out, Tagged Out, Zoned Out
SB 129 tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, it states: “Nothing in this article shall require any accommodation of any medical use of marijuana on the property or premises of any place of employment or during the hours of employment.” Any employee who is under the influence of marijuana at work can be terminated.
On the other hand, the bill tries to protect the rights of at least some employees at work who might in fact be somewhat impaired by their use of pot. While the bill does not provide protection for workers in “safety sensitive” positions, it does protect everyone else. It defines “safety sensitive” as “a job that has greater than normal level of trust, responsibility for or impact on the health and safety of others or where errors in judgment, inattentiveness or diminished coordination could put others in danger.”
Hmm, what have these guys been smoking? How many jobs can you think of where “errors in judgment, inattentiveness or diminished coordination” would not be a serious if not immediate problem? Would this legislation actually protect employers from “negligent retention” claims where their (somewhat) stoned workers make marijuana-induced mistakes? “Sure, he messed up the calculation of your benefits. But you’ll have to cut him some slack. He was on (medically approved) medication.”
I have the greatest sympathy for legislators struggling to balance the rights of workers in need of specific medications with the rights of everyone else. But in this case, they appear to be straddling the Grand Canyon. Is there any job where inattentiveness and diminished coordination would be acceptable? Consulting? Actuaries? (just kidding). I would suggest that the legislators create a specific list of any such jobs. That would make for interesting hearings, at the very least, and the applications for these positions would increase exponentially.
You have a problem with how I’m doing my job? Dude, I’m locked out. Try me a little later.

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Posted in Disability, Medical Issues, State News | 1 Comment »

CRM: Wreaking Bi-Coastal Havoc in Self Insurance

Monday, December 6th, 2010

You may recall the New York saga of Compensation Risk Managers (CRM), who single-handedly brought down the entire workers comp self-insurance group (SIG) industry in the empire state. Well, CRM is back in the news, this time in California, where their dubious business practices have collapsed a self-insurance group for the construction industry. The name of the failed SIG is “Contractors Access Program – get it? “CAP.” As in, “your exposure is capped; you have nothing to worry about.” To paraphrase a legendary President, “we have nothing to fear except fear itself” – to which we must add, unfortunately, the legitimate fear of predatory insurance administrators.
New York regulators took a very hard line in their response to the insolvency of a dozen SIGs operated by CRM. Someone had to make up the deficit created by CRM’s mismanagement, so they decided to penalize all the SIGs operating by the rules. This harsh and rather expansive definition of “joint and several liability” led the well-managed SIGs to abandon the state.
At this point, it’s not clear how California is going to pursue the $38 million shortfall. They will probably go after the actual participants in CAP, but it’s highly unlikely they will find anywhere near the cash to cover the insurance deficit. Meanwhile, eleven of the SIG members are suing CRM, the agent who sold the product and the SIG’s board of directors (some of whom are SIG members). If you total up the premiums paid by those filing the lawsuit, you only come up with $5.2 million. So the scale of the losses – $38 million – appears large enough to put every one of the SIG members out of business.
Promises, Promises
One of the interesting aspects of the lawsuit is the way the plaintiffs have quoted the marketing spiel right back at the defendents. They were promised “superior underwriting, claims oversight, loss control and administration.” The “rigorous underwriting” would provide savings “while preserving the integrity of the program.” Potential clients were assured that their exposure was limited to the premiums paid (a complete misrepresentation of the nature of SIGs) and that reinsurance kicked in on any claim above $500,000. (In reality, there was no reinsurance.) The agent who sold this dubious product promised to function as “much more than a broker.” They brought “particular expertise” to the program and would serve as the clients’s “partners in risk management functions.” Some partner!
What apparently was not disclosed to members and prospects was the fact that the SIG was losing money almost from the very beginning. CRM had a fall out with the original broker, which resulted in $6 million of SIG funds being used to pay him off.
The CRM website is still up, where you can read about “the CRM advantage.” They have an advantage, all right: they take advantage of naive and trusting companies seeking a little edge in the competitive comp market. It’s a killer edge, to be sure.
Thanks to Work Comp Central (subscription required) for the heads up on this case.

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Risk carnival, election wrap-up, and tooting our own horn

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

This week’s Cavalcade or Risk is posted by Ironman at Political Calculations. This biweeky roundup of risk posts is a sampling or “carnival” or topic-related posts. Ironman grades the entries for topicality, quality and readability – check it out.
Election results – Washington’s Initiative 1082 to privatize workers’ comp was soundly defeated last night, as about 58% of the voters opted to keep the system that has operated since 1911 in place. Obviously, this is a disappointment to private insurers and independent agents that hoped to open the state.
In Louisiana, it looks like Amendment 9 passed, but news reports we found are still vague. This change would require that claims would have to be re-argued before a panel of at least five appeals court judges before an agency’s decision could be reversed or changed.
In Arizona, Oklahoma and Colorado, voters cast ballots on constitutional amendments that would bar healthcare reform’s mandate that individuals buy insurance. Opt-out measures were passed in Oklahoma and Arizona, but was defeated in Colorado. Missouri had rejected the mandate in August, but not by a a state constitutional amendment.
At Comp Time, Roberto Ceniceros took a pre-election look at what gubernatorial wins might mean in California and New York. He notes that Jerry Brown was very quiet on the issue of workers compensation in California, but in New York, Andrew Cuomo has employee misclassification on his radar screen. As the state’s Attorney General, he recently joined attorneys general from Montana and New Jersey in an intent to sue FedEx.
And as long as we are on politics, it seems like a good time to bring up today’s news that the Treasury expects to earn a profit on AIG investments. Overall, despite the controversy, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout looks as though it is earning a healthy return.
CT Commissioner resigns – somewhat upstaged by yesterday’s election brouhaha was news that Connecticut’s Insurance Commissioner resigned abruptly. National Underwriter reports that Thomas Sullivan resigns amid pressure over healthcare rate hikes. He faced criticism after approving a 47% rate hike by Anthem BC/BS of CT.
Workers Comp Insider again named to top WC blogs
We were gratified and pleased to be named to 2010 roster of the LexisNexis Top 25 Workers Compensation and Workplace Issues:

“Consistently at the top of the heap when it comes to workers’ comp blogs, the Workers’ Comp Insider is a rare combination of breadth and depth. Now in its eighth year, the Insider covers comp issues, risk management, business insurance, and workplace health and safety from Anchorage to Miami. It provides in-depth analysis concerning workplace legislation, occupational medicine, and best practices from Maine to Hawaii. It should be in the “favorites” folder of every comp attorney’s web browser.”

We thank you, our readers, for your continued interest and support. We were happy to see many friends and colleagues on the list as well – we’re honored by the company in which we find ourselves. Be sure to check out some of the other fine blogs on the list. Also, if you haven’t discovered the gem that is the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation Law Community, we urge you to check that out, too.

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Posted in News roundups | 2 Comments »

The Tolls of Bell: Corruption in California

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Most of us associate a determination of disability with the inability to perform some or all aspects of a job. But most us do not work in Bell, California.
When former Bell police chief Randy Adams agreed to leave his job as chief in Glendale and run the department in Bell, he entered into an unusual agreement with city administrator Robert Rizzo. The agreement stipulated that Adams was disabled, suffering from the lingering effects of back, knee and neck injuries sustained in his prior public safety jobs. His attorney, Mark Pachowicz, said the agreement was designed to ensure that his client would not have to fight Bell for a medical pension.
Lest you think that Bell simply had an aggressive “hire the handicapped” program, it appears that Adams was able to perform all the duties of his job, with no accommodation required. In other words, this “disabled” hire was indistinguishable from able-bodied applicants for the job. There was a single stipulation of “no heavy lifting” – for a job which required no heavy lifting.
An Offer He Could Not Refuse
Rizzo considered Adams so capable, he hired him into two positions: police chief and special police counsel. Bell was so anxious to secure Adams’s services, they offered him $457,000 a year, double his prior salary. The hiring agreement qualified Adams for a tax-free disability benefit of $205,000 per year. Oh, did I mention that the hiring agreement also provided lifetime health insurance for Adams and his dependents, with no vesting period? Sure, that sounds like a pretty generous package, but Rizzo himself was pulling down $787,000 for taking on the burdens of managing the relatively small (pop. 40,000) working class town.
During his prior employment, Adams settled a workers comp claim for $45,000, following back surgery. He returned to work after a two week absence – which makes the amount of settlement appear rather generous. The comp settlement, however, is chump change compared to the irrestible benefits of working for Bell.
Fortunately for the beleagured Bell (and California) tax payers, this entire corrupt edifice came crashing down with the arrest of Rizzo and his numerous co-conspirators. (Adams has not been charged.) The status of Adams’s questionable hiring agreement with the city remains unresolved. As spokesperson for the California Public Employee’s Retirement System Ed Fong put it: “You’re only supposed to receive a disability retirement if you are disabled and unable to perform the normal duties of your job. If that is not the case, it would be fraud.”
In Bell they called it “standard operating procedure.” It was lucrative while it lasted. But the bell has tolled, bringing to an abrupt end a corruption scheme of All-American proportions.

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Posted in Disability, State News | 2 Comments »

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