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LATEST CASE ON DELAYED RECON DECISIONS
An understaffed and overwhelmed WCAB has struggled to review and decide petitions for reconsideration within 60 days. As a reprieve, they created the "grant study" approach to provide them an extension beyond the 60 day timeframe.
In Early v. WCAB (2023) the Court of Appeal held that LC 5909 only requires the WCAB "to act" within 60 days of receipt of a petition, as oppose to making an actual final decision. The result was to essentially preserve the "grant study" delay approach, as long as the WCAB could justify issuing such an order within 60 days of receiving a reconsideration petition.
Now comes Zurich American v. WCAB (CIGA) (2023) in which a petition for consideration was filed on a CIGA coverage issue. Nine months later the Board issued an order granting reconsideration to allow time for further study, from which an appeal was immediately filed. In its ruling, the Court of Appeal stated the WCAB was mandated under LC 5909 to act within 60 days of receiving the petition for reconsideration, after which they no longer had jurisdiction. As a result, the grant study order in this case was obviously late (by seven months) and therefore void. As a result, the petition for reconsideration was automatically dismissed by operation of law.
[COMMENT: So upon receipt of a grant study order, the parties need to assess whether the order was timely. If the order is late, then the parties must file a timely writ of mandate to the Court of Appeal, otherwise any potential jurisdictional objection will be considered waived...and force the parties to wait 1-3 years for a WCAB decision.]
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