eNews

We are all, I believe, feeling pain and hurt. We started 2020 feeling relatively optimistic and hopeful for a good and successful year. Instead, we are experiencing the limitations of our preparedness and of the structure of our society and legal system as it existed before COVID, and before the George Floyd killing. While we are all disturbed by the social unrest taking place across the nation, we are, I believe finally at a point of forced introspection, self-evaluation, and… Read more

By Elizabeth Furlow, Esq. Hartsuyker, Stratman & Williams-Abrego, San Francisco; Chair, Technology, Social Media and Website Subcommittee The goal of the Technology, Social Media and Website subcommittee is to recognize changes in technology relevant to the practice of Workers' Compensation Law, provide practical resources for our members about emerging technology tips that are foundational for today's legal market, and connect and communicate with our members on multiple technology platforms. This article provides several examples of those resources and instructions on… Read more

By Randy H. Pollak, Esq[1] 15 years after implementation of SB 899 and its “new regime” of apportionment law, one of the hottest litigated issues in workers’ compensation remains the scope of valid apportionment.  Case in point, on May 27, 2020, the Sixth district Court of Appeal published a major apportionment decision in County of Santa Clara v. WCAB (Justice), 2020 Cal. App. LEXIS 461.  What is immediately important for the workers’ compensation practitioner is the Justice decision’s dramatic limitation… Read more

The Division of Workers’ Compensation and the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board have recently issued several more emergency measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  As a reference to our readers, we provide links to those directives as we did in the most recent editions of the Enews: DWC and WCAB Continue to Expand Hearing Schedule at the District Offices (May 28, 2020) DWC, WCAB Update Forms to Identify Injuries Related to COVID-19 (May 22, 2020) Read more

CalChamber Podcast on COVID-19 and Governor Newsom’s Executive Order On May 22, 2020, Tiffany Boyland, our CLA Workers’ Compensation Executive Committee Vice Chair and Community Outreach subcommittee Chair, participated in a podcast for the California Chamber of Commerce, “COVID-19 and the Workers’ Comp Order Explained.” In this episode of The Workplace podcast, CalChamber Executive Vice President and General Counsel Erika Frank, and Tiffany Boyland discuss Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent executive order that created a rebuttable presumption for workers claiming to… Read more

In a Pretrial Order No. 105 (“PTO”) district court Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, ordered that the defendant companies produce responsive documents from agreed upon custodian with agreed upon search terms without regard for the relevance or responsiveness of the document. Read more

Back in the last days before stay-at-home orders—when news of the novel coronavirus had not been so consuming—the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued its decision in Marion Healthcare, LLC v. Becton Dickinson & Co., 952 F.3d 832 (7th Cir. 2020). Read more

In June 2018 the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lost their challenge to the AT&T/Time Warner. The AT&T/Time Warner case was the first vertical merger case litigated by the Antitrust Division or Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in almost 40 years. This was a vertical merger as Time Warner was a leading holder of video content and AT&T was a significant distributor of the same. Read more

In a May 1, 2020 order, Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero denied Uber’s motion to dismiss a monopolization complaint filed by Sidecar, a defunct ride-hailing company that claims it was driven out of business by Uber’s alleged anticompetitive practices in the ride-hailing market. The case is SC Innovations, Inc. v. Uber Technologies, Inc., No. 18-cv-07440-JCS, 2020 WL 2097611 (N.D. Cal., May 1, 2020). Read more

There are many informal discovery techniques you can use to gather information without using the procedures described in California’s Civil Discovery Act (Code Civ. Proc., §§ 2016.010-2036.050). Most of these techniques can be easily adapted to use as we shelter in place. Read more