Part 23

The Federal Aviation Administration received a command from Congress three years ago to streamline and facilitate the small aircraft certification process.

Manufacturers of airplanes and aviation equipment had long been complaining that the onerous certification process costs more in inspections and paperwork than manufacturing most parts, and that it added ridiculous overhead to airplane manufacturing.

Citing a long trend of declining aircraft sales, the aviation industry convinced the Feds that an important sector of the economy was drying up, that America was no longer competitive in the global aerospace sector and that existing FAR 23 (Federal Aviation Regulations Part 23) was a major contributor to aviation's decline.

Part 23 came into existence around 1970, a reform of the first certification regulations for general aviation aircraft promulgated just after World War II, then known as CAR 3, to handle the massive influx of new aviators.

Back then, safety in manufacturing was regulated by strictly defining exactly what everything did from an engineer's standpoint - i.e. setting forth specific, prescriptive, design criteria within the regulations.

For instance, the battery in Forty One Mike must meet very detailed design requirements detailed in 8 paragraphs and two sub-paragraphs in section 23.1353. You'd think a battery is a battery and the simple requirement that it be safe would be sufficient - but the regulatory philosophy that existed when section 23.1353 was written 45 years ago was prescriptive; the engineers knew exactly what worked and safety was paramount so every single battery had to be exactly the same except for size because that would be dictated by application.

Obviously things have changed in the nearly half century since Part 23 was written.

Worse, in order to keep up with technology, exceptions, waivers, amendments, etc. have made the regulations a tangled mess of illogical and irrelevant bureaucratic quagmire.

It's taken three years, but a revised Part 23 is now out for public comment.

The design philosophy that underwrites the new regulations is performance and risk based. The old regulations were, as noted, prescriptive in nature.

Gone are specific engineering requirements, replaced by philosophical direction. Forty One Mike's battery just has to have a certain capacity to power the plane's electrical system for 30 to 60 minutes.

This leaves designers much more freedom to build airplanes and their parts more efficiently, ergo less expensively. It also means that there's considerably less federal oversight and paperwork, because the details of size, shape, weight, ignition, etc. are left to the builder, not the government.

Workers' compensation goes through hemorrhaging reform every few years or so. Each of these reforms simply builds upon the earlier design philosophy of lawmakers - a prescriptive regulatory framework with the good intent of ensuring public safety by specifying exactly what needs to be done, when, how and by whom.

Nearly everyone in work comp, and in particular our customers (i.e. injured workers and their employers) have complaints and frustrations with our complex rules. Claims departments are much more concerned with compliance than actual performance. Meet the numbers is the design philosophy of much of workers' compensation.

This makes sense - workers' compensation has been around for over a century and it is difficult to say the least to change anything, so incremental changes centered on the basic underlying, original, design philosophy is much easier than starting out with a clean sheet.

But, the economy has changed dramatically. Work has changed even more so.

And global competitiveness is even more pressing than ever.

What if, instead of going back to the same old design philosophy of prescriptive regulation when the reform cycle comes around (which it will) the environment was changed to a performance based outcomes requirement?

What if, instead of saying that someone can only have 24 physical therapy visits, that we simply said that both the vendor and the customer would be expected to meet certain milestones at certain times in a claim life?

What if, instead of restricting temporary disability indemnity artificially to 120 days, that there was a "consensus standard" as the desired outcome based on injury?

Perhaps workers' compensation, by its nature and the fallibility of human logic, can't withstand such a massive change in philosophy.

But perhaps it already is undergoing such a massive change via the under-swelling of professionals that see a different, and hopefully better, way of managing work injury; some call this Advocacy Based Claims Management, others just call it "doing the right thing."

What if our laws were really about just doing the right thing, instead of meeting a bureaucrat's prescription?

We may never get such laws. Entrenched competing interests may be immovable.

But, as former Royal Air Force Capt. Pablo Mason famously said after being terminated from a private charter airline for allowing star soccer player Robbie Savage into the cockpit to allay fears of flying, "Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools."

Let's be wise. Not foolish.

The Opiate Shaker

When my wife and I were in Kentucky last month for the Derby, we took a day out to visit Pleasant Hill and the Shaker Village.

Over 3,000 acres with 105 years of history are contained in 34 surviving structures, many of them hosting exhibits.

One exhibit was about the history of William F. Pennebaker, who ultimately was designated a medical doctor after being sent to Cincinatti, OH to get training so the village could have its own medical servicing.

Pennebaker was known to be quite a character, but was also hailed as one of the more learned and read men in the village.

On display was a representation of an actual clinical note regarding a great new medication Pennebaker, and his mentor, S. Tripp, M.D. Pleasant Hill, Ky. that was published in the Bayer's Pharmaceutical Products catalog of the time (1902) on benefits in the prescription of heroin:

"Although a new remedy, Heroin has been found to possess so many valuable properties that it has been much more thoroughly investigated than many older preparations. The point of special interest in regard to this drug is its remarkable action upon the respirator tract. While it reduces the number of respirations, its action here is not that of a depressant, since it increases the volume of inspiration and the force of expiration. ... On the other hand, the power of Heroin to allay irritation of the nerves of the air passages has rendered it a favorite remedy for the relief of cough. ... Compared with other narcotic remedies, and especially morphine, Heroin has proved remarkably free from after-effects. Some instances of unpleasant sequelae have been reported, but they have been of a mild degree, and attributable in many instances to excessive dosage."
...
"In administering Heroin, also, care should be taken not to give it in combination with alkaline drugs, such as bicarbonate of sodium, as it is state that these are liable to decompose it in time and render it inefficient."
...
"The opportunity to test the merits of this new remedy presented itself recently, as it was prescribed in our own family by a consulting physician. The limited use of Heroin since has given results so marvelously beyond our expectations that it seems proper to add our commendations to the growing endorsement of this morphine derivative."

What was known then about opiates by the physician population isn't much less than now, at least according to the sessions in the National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit that was held in Atlanta, GA earlier this year.

At The Summit, one of the presenters said, matter of frankly, that "what we have found is that many of these people end up just opting out of life..."

Claim administrators in the Third Party Payer track said they were seeing a 30% use of opiates in their claims compared to 4% in the general health population - but remember that general health is a much larger population than work comp, and the story I was hearing was that many come through the general health gateway because physicians simply aren't well trained on opiates.

There was case study after case study about intervention in claims - some of the patients were resistant, but more shockingly, more of the resistance came from the medical community itself, mostly because of the fear of taking long term opiate use away and the potential for adverse effects.

The sinister part of opiates is that people don't realize the fog they live in. The effects take hold subtly, discretely, until the patient believes that the drugs are necessary despite the adverse consequences of altered thought and personality.

Dependency masks itself as fear.

One presenter, a chief pharmacist for a claims administrator, toured California to talk to doctors.

Her mission was to go visit the physicians and show them how bad opiates are, and how errant prescriptions could put patients at greater risk of adverse health consequences. Some took the advice, he said, and didn't realize what they were doing until shown the data.

Others screamed at her and kicked her out of the office.

And there were some that were obvious pill mills with cameras everywhere and the physicians didn't care.

Her take away - no one was holding the medical community accountable.

We have seen some of this change as some doctors have been sent to jail for injudicious prescription of opiates. Others are fighting indictments and civil complaints.

Accountability is starting to permeate the medical community with the help of law enforcement.

The claims community is opening up too, seeing alternative treatments, drug rehabilitation and limited psychological services, as pathways out of the opiate liability stream that was opened up in the first place because dosages, that produce the "after-effects" and "unpleasant sequelae," were not well monitored.

In time, the "opiate crisis" in work comp will abate.

And likely be replaced by some new concern...

114 years of accumulated knowledge, and we still have much to learn.

It's Not HR

For some reason business likes to use workers' compensation for its human resources issues - namely to terminate an undesired employee.

All too often, when I was a defense lawyer, I was asked to include termination language in settlement papers, or asked what the effect would be on a case if the employee was formally terminated as part of, after, or prior to resolution of the comp case.

In all situations my answer was simply that the work comp case has nothing to do with employee termination or discipline, that it is an HR issue, and that if the company wished to include some termination process included in the work comp case then they should "man up" and just execute the termination.

Because in my experience and training an undesired employee costs far more to maintain than the possible consequences of termination - even if "wrongful" - due to non-production, morale amongst co-employees, and a whole host of other "soft" costs.

Still, workers' compensation gets used inappropriately to rid a company of employees that management is too chicken to deal with otherwise.

A case out of Ohio points to just such boneheaded management use of work comp to cull employment ranks, resulting in case law that isn't necessary and just may make things worse for the rest of the business management world.

Alexis Jones was a claims examiner for the City of Cleveland Department of Law.

Shortly after arriving at work on May 5, 2009, Jones slipped on a piece of cheese that was on the floor. She fell to her knees, but was unhurt. According to her court filings, she didn't even tear her nylon stockings.

About two hours before the end of her workday, the law department's office manager came to see Jones and directed her to submit to a post-accident drug and alcohol test.

The city's written testing policy provides that the city may send an employee for drug and alcohol testing following any on-the-job "accident." The policy defines an accident as an incident where "there is bodily injury to the person requiring medical attention."

The policy further provides that an employee may be disqualified for compensation and benefits under the Ohio Workers’ Compensation Act if the employee refuses to test, or the result of the test is positive. It also states that employees who "test positive after an accident remain subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination."

At the testing center, Jones indicated that she did not want to be examined and stated she was not injured. Jones was also advised that she could not leave the premises or call her husband, and she was stopped when she attempted to do so.

Jones eventually underwent the medical examination, which revealed no physical injury from her fall, and a breath test, which revealed no trace of alcohol.

She then was given a plastic cup to provide a urine sample, she claimed she was unable to do so because the cup had broken and fallen into the toilet when she tried to collect her urine.

Jones was then given 20 ounces of water and a second cup, but she was still unable to provide a urine sample.

By the time Jones got the second cup, it was already past the end of her normal workday. After informing the testing center staff that her attempts to urinate had been in vain, Jones insisted that she be allowed to leave.

A representative of the city informed her that leaving the testing center and failing to provide a urine sample would be considered a “refusal to test” that had disciplinary consequences, but Jones left anyway.

Jones later testified that she had to leave because she needed to meet her husband, who normally picks her up from work, and she had a meeting that evening regarding her dying father’s end-of-life care.

The following morning, Jones reported to work and offered to return to the testing center to complete the urine sample. The city refused her offer and sent her home instead.

The city subsequently filed a workers' compensation claim on Jones' behalf, over her objection. The law department also held a disciplinary hearing regarding Jones' failure to complete the test.

The Bureau of Workers' Compensation eventually dismissed the claim the city had filed, determining there had been no injury.

The city, however, suspended Jones from work for 10 days.

Jones appealed the disciplinary action, but the Cleveland Civil Service Commission upheld the suspension. Jones sought judicial review, and Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas overturned the suspension.

The court found that the commission did not have a sufficient basis to find that Jones refused testing.

Even if she had refused, the court said, the city was not authorized to suspend Jones’ employment because the only ramification of a worker's refusal to take a post-accident test was a disqualification of workers’ compensation benefits.

The city appealed, insisting that the judge's ruling was "unsupported by preponderance of substantial, reliable and probative evidence."

The city lost.

Why did it go this far? What was the real reason for targeting Jones?

We don't know because that is not in the court record.

What we do know is that the city felt compelled to use the workers' compensation process to effect a termination of an employee, and all I can think of is that, for some reason, Jones was deemed an undesirable employee.

But no one in the Department of Law had the testes to effect a termination lawfully, likely in fear that Jones would "retaliate" and cost the department some unallocated funds.

Hey management - workers' compensation is for a work INJURY. If there is no work injury then don't use workers' compensation for your human resources issues.

To read the Ohio court's decision, click here.

Distrust Government

There are three stakeholders in workers' compensation: employers who pay for it; injured workers who benefit from it; and government which sets the rules and enforces them.

Or at least is supposed to.

We prosecute employers who commit fraud. Ditto for employees.

But at least the executive branch of the California state government seems to feel it is beyond reproach when it comes to opening its books for audit.

Assemblyman Tom Daly, D-Anaheim, had made a request for the state auditor to take a look at how the Department of Insurance and Division of Workers' Compensation work with prosecutors, insurers and employers to fight fraud.

But the governor's office didn't like the oversight request.

Sure you trust this guy?

According to sources who discussed the matter with WorkCompCentral on condition of anonymity, Gov Jerry Brown quashed Daly's efforts with considerable political pressure on Democratic members of the audit committee.

Daly’s May 2 audit request says lawmakers created tools to prevent or reduce unnecessary treatments for injured workers, but despite those tools, “there is ample evidence that the system remains rife with fraud and waste in connection with providing care, and related services to injured workers.”

Daly sought an explanation into how and to what extent state agencies, county prosecutors, self-insured employers and insurance companies worked together to fight workers’ compensation fraud.

Daly wanted to know how these entities coordinate anti-fraud efforts and the metrics used to measure progress in reducing fraud. He also wanted the auditor to investigate strategies used in other health care systems to prevent and prosecute fraud, as well as identify practices that may not be fraudulent, but that “result in the wasteful or abusive provision of services to injured workers.”

Staff members for the legislators on the audit committee who responded to reporter inquiries on Thursday said there was some support for the measure by both Democrats and Republicans.

But Brown's office, without explanation, did not want any review of the fraud-fighting apparatus, which is largely funded through assessments on employers and overseen by the Fraud Assessment Commission, the Department of Insurance and the DWC.

So Daly withdrew his request Wednesday depriving the Joint Legislative Audit Committee the opportunity to hear testimony or vote on whether to approve the audit.

Daly's office did not respond to reporter's inquiries either.

The industry talks about transparency all of the time and the chorus has been getting louder over the years. For example, it seemed that every presentation at the Self Insurance Institute of America's Workers' Compensation Executive Forum I just attended talked about the need for more transparency.

Employers want transparency because they pay for the system. 

Employees need transparency to know that they're getting what they should.

But the California government doesn't want transparency because it makes the rules, including the rules about enforcing its own rules...

Workers' compensation seems to be a system built on mistrust - and Brown's office wants to keep it that way.

**********POSTSCRIPT**********

On March 31, 2016, the news publication Reveal of The Center for Investigative Reporting published, "Profiteering masquerades as medical care for injured California workers." (Reveal has a whole series on work comp fraud and it is excellent and should be required reading for everyone in the industry, especially in California).

The most telling quote in that piece, which is completely validates by the notion that our government either has something to hide, or an embarrassment to protect, is by accused fraudster, owner of Landmark Medical Management, Kareem Ahmed who was caught on tape, according to the article, stating, "Nobody gives a fuck.”

Indeed, the article points out that "while health care programs such as Medicare have developed an arsenal of weapons to ward off fraud, California state regulators have few tools at their disposal. For one thing, the state shares oversight with hundreds of insurers and self-insured employers, leaving no one clearly in charge."

Perhaps it is THIS embarrassment that Brown intends to hide.

Partial remedy: mandate that ALL medical EOBs be shared with the patient, then reward patients for reporting activity that ends up either fraudulent or clearly erroneous. That is one simple tool that may cost carriers a little more, but could lighten the fraud assessment surcharge on employers considerably.

Hiding the ball by avoiding audits, however, is just plain wrong and the government needs to be called out on this bullshit.

The administration says it wants to deliver "evidence-based, appropriate and quickly delivered" medical care, but does nothing to avoid the opposite.

If mistrust is to be reversed, then we should not tolerate hypocrisy from our government officials.

Culture and Claims

Jon Pearson, Director of Life Path Services for QLI, a spine and brain injury rehabilitation service, gave a wonderful presentation about returning folks to a new normal during the recovery from injury at the Self Insurance Institute of America's Workers' Compensation Executive Forum yesterday.

Part of what he talked about was the team at QLI and how crucial they were to the success of the treatment model.

"If people don't want to work there," Pearson reflected, "then who would want to be a patient there?"

That observation goes well beyond QLI's business model.

Indeed - later in the day a`member on the panel for "Out Front Ideas: How successful Partnerships enhance Your Workers' Compensation Program" noted that claims adjusters have the toughest jobs in workers' compensation because they are expected to deal with their clients (injured workers) with empathy and compassion, yet meet conflicting production and financial goals.

The industry is currently fretting about the drain of talent on the front ends. Attracting, recruiting and retaining good claims handlers is at the top of every work comp adjusting house executive's lists.

How much does the internal culture of a claims house affect the quality of the claims handling? How many people are unwittingly thrown into a claims management situation where the handlers don't want to be there? How much of that contributes to a state's good, or bad, claims ratings and experience?

The Workers Compensation Research Institute recently released survey results of client satisfaction with workers' compensation medical care comparing results across 14 states. The middle of the country scored the highest by far, regardless of whether there were fee schedules, treatment guidelines, etc. Florida was miserably at the bottom.

How much client satisfaction was not the product of the actual medical care, but really of the claims handling experience? After all, the injured worker has to go through the claims handler first to get to the medical care provider...

Obviously self insured entities have much greater say in their claims handling. They competitively seek bids from claims houses, and one of the overall messages coming from the SIIA conference is, essentially, you get what you pay for in claims handling.

So while pricing the job is a consideration, the quality that is provided has a much bigger role; what Out Front panelist Stu Thompson, CEO of The Builders Group, referred simply to as, "value."

We all know of claims handlers who are besieged with extraordinarily high case loads. And there are others that have more reasonable loads.

Kevin Confetti, Deputy Chief Risk Officer for the University of California, said his claims staff's maximum is 100 files per adjuster. He claims very high satisfaction ratings from clients, and good claims experience numbers. I didn't ask him if his handlers like working there, but I have to assume that being a part of the California University payroll isn't that bad of a gig.

The reality of workers' compensation is that the claims process has the most impact: perceptions, finances, expenses and ultimately outcomes are all tied to how well any particular claim is managed.

My take from this week's seminar education is that the claims experience is intimately connected with the happiness of the claims staff. The quality of the service, i.e. the value, is ultimately the product of how well the claims handler deals with the client; from setting expectations up front, to communicating through out the process, to ensuring obstacles are smoothed.

A disgruntled, unhappy, under-appreciated, unmotivated claims staff isn't going to return value.

If the claims staff doesn't want to work there, then would I want my work injured to be clients there?

But, if your claims staff does like their work, and that is reflected in good outcomes, then tell the world about it with a Comp Laude nomination...

Colorado Disruption

Voters in Colorado are being asked to adopt a single payer medical system.

Proposition 20 would enact Amendment 69 to the state Constitution, creating ColoradoCare to pay for medical services provided to all residents of the state regardless of why they need treatment.

The amendment language expressly requires the program to pay for treatment provided to people hurt on the job. And it directs the legislature to repeal parts of the Workers’ Compensation Act obligating employers to cover medical costs for occupational injuries and illnesses.

To pay for all of the medical care, a 3.33% payroll tax would be assessed on all workers and a 6.67% payroll tax on employers in the state. It would also levy a 10% health care premium tax on non-payroll income. Supporters say these taxes will raise $25 billion that will be needed to pay for medical costs for all of the state’s residents.

Opponents say the math is wrong, that costs won't be reduced, and that important safety and other considerations will be thwarted.

Pinnacol Assurance, Colorado's state-chartered carrier, also says its bad for employers and their workers.

“And any workers’ comp savings will be eroded quickly by lower worker productivity and increased indemnity costs,” Edie Sonn, Pinnacol's vice president of communications, wrote on the carrier’s blog. “That’s because ColoradoCare won’t have mechanisms in place to do all the things Pinnacol does: work with employers to keep workers safe and minimize the potential for injury, and work with doctors to help injured workers get back to work in a timely and safe way.”

Which brings me to the point of discussion about just what workers' compensation is supposed to do.

Safety, return to work, injury prevention - these are offshoots of the workers' compensation insurance formula because it saves the insurance company money, and arguable thus saves the employer money.

Whether the employer, or the worker, is particularly interested in saving the insurance company money is an irrelevant argument though, because, while the carrier may have some influence over behavior, ultimately it is the employer and the worker to behave as desired.

Brian Carpenter, R. Ph., Clinical Director and pharmacist with Optum, made a very poignant observation to attendees at the Self-Insured Workers' Compensation Executive Forum in Scottsdale, AZ yesterday.

The silos that now exist, said Carpenter, interfere with the sharing of important medical and health information. Consequently general health doesn't know what the workers' compensation providers are doing, and visa-versa.

This is, in part, because of the legal and regulatory environment dictating privacy, and it is also in part due to the fact that there are simply too many different data platforms making data share radically difficult.

The unfortunate outcome of this information failure is inappropriate or ineffective treatment that may considerably extend disability or time off work, or worse, result in treatment contraindications.

Jennifer L. Evans, a shareholder with the Polsinelli law firm in Denver, co-authored an analysis of the single-payer proposal for the Colorado Health Foundation.

Evans told WorkCompCentral that Prop 20 would represent a huge culture shift in workers' compensation, but the end result is simply unknown.

“It really is a sea change for workers’ comp,” she said. “On the health care side there’s not much change, mostly just payments. In comp, it appears this would change the infrastructure for where care is furnished and might impact the type of care available.”

In my mind, while completely disruptive to the status quo, ColoradoCare is a debate and idea that is long over due. The arguments against the idea of a single payer system strike me as simply entrenched interests seeking to protect their turf and business models.

But, as we have seen over the past few years in critique after critique, those interests and business models may no longer be relevant, may no longer be economical, and in fact may ultimately be more harmful to employer and employee than what is proposed.

Just what does Pinnacol (or any other workers' compensation carrier) do that is so special for employer safety programs that state or federal agencies don't do now, or that some other more specialized provider could do?

Why is it that return to work is such an insurance company specialty? The migration from medical treatment to disability determination (ergo return to work status) is nothing special - general health and disability insurance providers have been doing this for decades; the only distinction in work comp is that all of this is combined into a very complex equation that the insurance company controls for the purpose of containing costs.

And as noted by Carpenter, the separate silos ultimately are dangerous to employees, and consequently likely more expensive for employers.

The insurance carrier's workers' compensation role is very simple: provide medical care, and pay indemnity, nothing more.

This is a reality that we in the work comp industry simply forget.

All of the other ancillary programs foisted upon worker and employer may help them, or may not - these are completely out of the control of the carrier and depend upon the attitudes, cultures, and willingness of the service recipients to have any impact.

Nobody really knows how all of this will play out.

What we do know is that we are in a dramatic age of disruption. The tech industry has been disrupting existing business models and entire industries for a couple of decades now.

Why anyone would think that the insurance industry, and in particular workers' compensation, is not just as subject to disruption is pure sophistry.

Constitution Times Deuce

The Flying None...

2016 really is the year that challenges to workers' compensation's constitutionality is playing out across the nation in multiple jurisdictions under various theories.

Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin, only the third Republican governor in the history of Kentucky, drew fire for disbanding the Workers’ Compensation Nominating Commission on May 9 and then reconstituted it with new members.

Bevin dismantled the seven-member nominating commission even though all of them were serving unexpired terms. The commission exists to advise the governor on which administrative law judges should hear workers’ compensation cases.

The governor also changed the terms and membership criteria for commission members. State law requires that three of the members be from the state’s majority political party (in this case Democratic) and two from the minority party (Republican). Bevin’s executive order changes the makeup to two Democrats, two Republicans and one at-large member opponents say will mirror’s the governor’s views.

The Kentucky AFL-CIO, and Teamsters Local 89 aren't happy with Bevin and have brought suit to declare the governor's actions unconstitutional. Joining them are former nominating commission member Charles McCoy and Louisville attorney Eric Lamb, who represents three workers' compensation claimants.

They say Bevin is trying to stack the commission against workers and in favor of business.

The suit includes a petition for a temporary and, ultimately, a permanent injunction to prohibit the governor's restructuring from ever taking place. Franklin Judge Phillip Shepherd has scheduled a preliminary hearing for June 1 and the governor's office has decided to hold off on any appointments until at least then.

The challenge isn't appreciated by the governor's office. “Another day, another frivolous lawsuit,” the governor’s press secretary, Amanda Stamper, emailed WorkCompCentral.

The plaintiffs claim that not only did Bevin stack the deck with his new nominating commission, he refused to reappoint six qualified administrative law judges. 

In the meantime California lien claimants challenging SB 863 were thrown out of the Supreme Court of the United States with a no comment "writ denied," the final grasp for straw over.

On Monday, the court denied the petition for certiorari in Angelotti Chiropractic v. Baker, bringing an end to more than three years of litigation over the $100 "activation" fee imposed by SB 863.

They filed suit, with Angelotti Chiropractic serving as the lead plaintiff, asserting the doctors, chiropractors, pharmacies, interpreters, copy companies and other businesses like them have no way to get paid unless they file a lien claim. Thus, they complained that the forfeiture penalty is a governmental deprivation of their ability to be paid.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wasn't persuaded, finding that a lien merely represented the claimant's expectation of payment.

Once the 9th Circuit denied the plaintiffs' request for reconsideration, the Angelotti plaintiffs turned to the U.S. Supreme Court for relief in January.

Though the California Department of Industrial Relations submitted a waiver of its right to respond to the petition, SCOTUS said it wanted to hear what the administration had to say.

The DIR submitted a response arguing that a lien claimant's "expectations" are not property subject to a governmental taking and that it just imposed a "user fee" on those who chose to use the workers' compensation adjudicatory system to pursue payment.

Apparently SCOTUS was persuaded.

And that's our constitutional lesson in work comp for the day....