BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1373
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Date of Hearing: April 24, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON INSURANCE
Henry T. Perea, Chair
AB 1373 (John Perez) - As Introduced: February 22, 2013
SUBJECT : Workers' compensation: safety officer death benefits
SUMMARY : Extends the statute of limitations in certain
circumstances for dependents of public safety officers to file a
workers' compensation claim for death benefits. Specifically,
this bill :
1)Provides an unspecified time within which proceedings must be
commenced in cases involving:
a) Cancer, including leukemia;
b) Tuberculosis;
c) Blood-borne infectious diseases, including
methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
2)Specifies the public safety officers to whom this extended
limitations period will apply.
3)Limits the extended limitations period to cases where the date
of injury is during the employee's active service.
4)Provides that the extended limitations period does not apply
to any claims that have already been adjudicated or otherwise
finalized, or for which the limitations period has already
lapsed as of December 31, 2013.
5)Specifies that the dependents to whom the death benefit will
be available are the dependent or dependents on the date of
death.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes a comprehensive system for providing benefits to
workers injured on the job, including death benefits payable
to dependents.
2)Provides generally that an injured worker bears the burden to
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establish that the injury for which benefits are claimed arose
out of or in the course of employment.
3)Provides, for specified peace officer and firefighter
employees, that certain injuries or conditions are presumed to
have arisen out of or in the course of employment.
4)Specifies in great detail which firefighters and peace
officers are entitled to the various presumptions.
5)Provides for a statute of limitations defining the period
within which a claim for benefits must be filed, and with
respect to death benefits, specifies that the claim must be
filed within one year of the later of:
a) The date of death, if death occurs less than one year
from the date of injury, or
b) The date of last furnishing of benefits, if death occurs
more than one year from the date of injury, or
c) The date of death, if death occurs more than one year
after the date of injury and compensation benefits have
been furnished.
6)Provides further that, notwithstanding the above limitations,
no proceedings may be commenced later than one year after the
date of death or 240 weeks after the date of injury.
7)Establishes special rules governing the period within which
proceedings must be commenced for asbestosis and HIV/AIDS
cases.
8)Establishes a schedule of death benefits, with specific
amounts due depending on whether the dependent is fully or
partially dependent, and depending on the number of fully or
partially dependent beneficiaries. Depending on the
circumstances, the death benefits can be in excess of
$300,000.
9)Provides that when a person otherwise entitled to death
benefits has no dependents, the benefits shall be paid to the
state, and credited to the uninsured employers fund, which
pays for benefits to injured workers who were employed by an
illegally uninsured employer.
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10)Specifies that questions about full or partial dependency,
and questions about who the dependents are, shall be
determined "in accordance with the facts as they exist at the
time of the injury of the employee."
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
1)Purpose . According to the author, and the sponsor the
California Professional Firefighters, there are cases where
current law unfairly harms the dependents of fallen public
safety officers. In circumstances where a safety officer dies
more than 240 weeks after a diagnosis of the condition that
causes death, current law fails to protect surviving
dependents. However, there are conditions where survival for
more than 240 weeks after diagnosis is not uncommon, notably a
cancer that goes temporarily into remission, or a blood-borne
disease that results in a debilitating but long, slow decline.
2)Date of injury . In many cases under current law, a public
safety officer is entitled to file a workers' compensation
claim for up to five years after terminating employment. This
bill, however, limits application of the extended limitations
period to cases where the date of injury was during the period
of active employment. This limitation is designed to ensure
that the public agencies that will be responsible to paying
these claims will have timely actual notice that this sort of
benefit might arise in the future.
3)Unspecified extension period . Rather than specify in the bill
how long into the future this extended period will last, the
author has left that time frame blank. The intention of
leaving this provision unspecified at this time is to allow
for discussions between the safety officers' representatives
and the public agencies about what period of time best
establishes a reasonable balance between fairness to surviving
dependents and the interests of public agencies to a degree of
certainty about their potential obligations.
4)Dependents . Because the bill contemplates that there may be
several years after the "date of injury" (diagnosis) and the
resulting death, it provides for a different rule to identify
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which dependents are entitled to benefits. Current law fixes
the identification of dependency at the date of injury,
whereas the bill, more appropriately in these cases, fixes the
identification of dependency on the date of death.
5)Public agencies oppose the bill . A number of public agencies
are opposed to the bill primarily on the basis of increased
costs as well as the uncertainty of the as-yet unspecified
time period. These agencies believe that the workers'
compensation benefits available to public safety officers are
already sufficiently generous, and local governments are
simply not in the position to incur new financial obligations.
6)Prior legislation . Last year, AB 2451 (John Perez) also
proposed to extend the statute of limitations in presumption
cases. AB 2451 was significantly broader in at least 2
respects: it also applied to death resulting from heart
conditions, and it did not limit the cases where the extended
limitations period applied to those where the date of injury
was during active employment. Rather, AB 2451 would have
applied regardless of when the condition arose, resulting in
significantly more uncertainty, and significantly more cases,
than AB 1373 will apply to. Governor Brown vetoed AB 2451.
The veto message provided:
"I am returning Assembly Bill 2451 without my signature.
California faces fiscal challenges unparalleled since the Great
Depression. While much progress has been made to reduce our
structural deficit, balance our budget, reform workers'
compensation and rein in spiraling pension costs - - much work
remains.
This measure seeks to redress a problem whose scope is not fully
knowable. Proponents cite the case of the firefighter who dies
a lingering and painful death from cancer and note that if
that death occurs even one day past an arbitrary statute of
limitation - originally established in 1913 - the surviving
dependent family members are denied substantial death
benefits.
Meanwhile opponents decry any expansion of this nearly 100 year
old limitation as wildly fiscally imprudent, opening the doors
to fiscal ruin and damnation of our efforts to restore fiscal
sanity to our state.
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What is needed is rational, thoughtful consideration of
balancing the serious fiscal constraints faced at all levels
of government against our shared priority to adequately and
fairly compensate the families of those public safety heroes
who succumb to work-related injuries and disease.
Unfortunately, little more than anecdotal evidence is available
to base such deliberations upon. If deaths due to cancer for
firefighters and peace officers approximate, let alone exceed,
those of the general population, we can surmise the potential
impact of doubling the statute of limitations. It could
increase costs to the state by tens of millions of dollars and
at the local level by hundreds of millions. Alternatively,
there is little credible evidence that the circumstance this
measure intends to address occurs other than rarely, yet
tragically. In the later circumstance the costs would be
modest and reasonable."
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Professional Firefighters (sponsor)
Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs
California Fraternal Order of Police
Long Beach Police Officers Association
Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association
Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs Association
Santa Ana Police Officers Association
Opposition
California Association of Joint Powers Authorities
California Coalition on Workers' Compensation CSAC Excess
Insurance Authority
County of Los Angeles
County of San Bernardino
League of California Cities (League)
Analysis Prepared by : Mark Rakich / INS. / (916) 319-2086
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