Court shoots down applied underwriters’ appeal In CIC conservation
- The U.S. Supreme Court rejected, without comment Applied Underwriters’ appeal of the Ninth Circuit twice upholding the California Dept. of Insurance’s conservation of California Insurance Company.
- Applied appealed to the Ninth directly and separately under the guise of its New Mexico subsidiary – it failed in both cases to stop the conservation.
- The Supreme Court distributed Applied’s petition for a conference last Friday, and by Monday, the Justices had seen enough and dismissed the case entirely.
- The Ninth Circuit found that the San Mateo Superior Court handling the CIC conservation has exclusive jurisdiction over the proceedings.
Ambiguities with workers’ compensation
- Workers’ compensation, even for remote workers, is mandatory for most employers in every state except Texas, where only public employers or employers with government contracts are required to have it.
- If a worker receives workers’ compensation due to an on-the-job injury, and they’re unable to work, they’re typically entitled to medical bill coverage.
- About two-thirds of their wages at the time they were working, but the wages workers receive are typically capped at your state’s average wage.
- “If the injury doesn’t result directly from the work environment, then it’s not a work-related injury, so there are ambiguities,” said aid Michael Duff, a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law.
Injured Georgia Pacific employee should survive
- A Georgia-Pacific worker in Texas was critically injured on the job.
- The employee was caught between the back of a forklift and a kiln charge at the Pineland facility.
- Although the injuries are very serious, he is expected to survive.
- The company is currently trying to identify how the incident happened.
Tennessee decreases rates
- The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance announced a decrease in workers’ compensation insurance rates.
- It’s the 10th consecutive year these rates have decreased.
- As of December 2022, the loss cost decrease was set at 10.2%, marking 10 years in a row that the loss cost rate has decreased.
- Tennessee employers have also reported fewer significant workplace injuries, which have contributed to the reduction in loss costs.