State Sen. Leland Yee allegedly solicited bribes for NFL Workers’ Compensation Law

The NFL controversy involving workers' compensation claims continues to heat up. Today's post by Brett Gowen of the California Bar is shared from fbgslaw.com

Brett Gowen

As part of the ongoing saga of State Senator Leland Yee, a new charge for racketeering was given by a federal grand jury. As part of the indictment, Sen. Yee allegedly solicited $60,000 for Yee’s vote and another senator’s vote on a bill dealing with limiting workers’ compensation benefits for NFL players. According to the indictment, Sen. Yee believed the money would be paid by a NFL team owner according to an LA Times article.

Attorney, Melissa Brown at Fraulob Brown Gowen & Snapp, has a connection to the NFL and their treatment of injured players. Ms. Brown was retained as an expert witness for the NFL Players’ Association at an arbitration hearing involving a workers’ compensation law dispute with NFL owners. The arbitration, and the flurry of lawsuits involving NFL injuries, is part of the growing recognition of the impact the game has on the long-term health of the players. 

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California Tossed Out NFL Players Brain Injury Claim: Time To Change The System?

While professional teams in California have sheltered themselves from workers' compensation claims, the injuries have not gone away. Workers' compensation has long been a vehicle to insulate employers and their insurance carriers from the payment of benefits. With the erosion of workers' compensation as a functional benefit program, many experts are now calling for its elimination altogether and merely allow the claims to proceed in the civil justice system. Today's post is shared from sportsworldnews.com . A California workers panel threw out former Dallas Cowboy Tony Dorsett's brain-injury claim just months before he was diagnosed with initial signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. The diagnosis of Dorsett, the 59-year-old Hall of Fame running back, was made public Wednesday when two UCLA researchers found that Dorsett, Hall of Fame offensive lineman Joe DeLamielleure and former All-Pro defensive lineman Leonard Marshall showed signs of CTE, a degenerative disease that has been linked to head trauma. The condition has led to depression, dementia and suicide in former NFL players. Dorsett's claim was denied in May when a workers compensation judge ruled that Dorsett agreed to an $85,000 settlement for injuries to "multiple orthopaedic body parts" in 1991, the Times reported. Therefore, the player was not allowed to file any more claims for subsequent injury, according to state records. Dorsett appealed that workers'...

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More about professional athletes and workers' compensation

Workers' Compensation: NFL Fans Weigh Impact Of Players' Head ...

Oct 18, 2013

The recent TV documentary League of Denial and the book by the same name claim that for years the NFL had denied and covered up evidence linking football and brain damage. Is the concussion conversation challenging ...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Workers' Compensation: Book: NFL denied concussion link to football

Oct 04, 2013

The book, "League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth," reports that the NFL used its power and resources to discredit independent scientists and their work; that the league cited research data that ...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Workers' Compensation: Some players may be out of NFL deal

Sep 27, 2013

New details from the NFL's $765 million proposed concussion settlement reveal that the first players diagnosed with football-related brain damage would be shut out of the deal. And with the number of confirmed brain damage ...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Report Finds 8 Million California Residents Lived in Poverty in 2011

Today's post was shared by votersinjuredatwork and comes from www.californiahealthline.org

There were about 8 million California residents living in poverty in 2011, according to a new report that factored in health care and other costs, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports. The figure is significantly higher than federal estimates of nearly 6 million state residents living in poverty that year. Federal poverty estimates for California and other states use a formula from 1964 that defines poverty as income less than three times the cost of a "minimum diet," which would have been $22,811 for a family of four in 2011. However, some observers have called this method outdated because food is a smaller part of most families' budgets than it was 50 years ago. The study was conducted by researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Unlike federal figures, the study's poverty estimates include: Government benefits; Housing prices; Health care costs; and Other expenditures (Olson, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 9/30). According to the report, the poverty rate in California was about 22% in 2011, the highest in the U.S. and significantly higher than the official rate of 16% (Holland, Los Angeles Times, 9/30). When the study factored in cost of living: Poverty rates increased in places with high housing costs and other expenses, such as Orange County and the San Francisco Bay Area; and Poverty rates decreased in areas where housing is less expensive, such as some Northern California and...

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Thousands of California injury claims made by professional athletes

Professional football injuries have taken the national spotlight as workers' compensation claims are being outlawed and restrcted in many jurisdictions. The path being taken, elimination of insurance coverage, is one that will ultimately result in the elimination of body contact sports. Economic incentives, and the lack of them, direct the business of professional athletes and ultimately the root to a healthier workplace. Today's post was shared by votersinjuredatwork and comes from www.latimes.com

The National Football League’s increasingly visible injury legacy has become a topic of national debate, one that threatens to cast a lasting shadow over the country’s most popular, and profitable, sport. Far less attention has been paid to the physical woes of other athletes, but a review of injury filings in California suggests that professional athletes of all stripes walk away from their sports with nagging and often permanent injuries. Over the past two decades, more than 2,500 claims have been filed by former baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer players against their former teams in California’s workers’ compensation system. In the past six years, more than 940 of them -- among them stars such as two-time baseball most valuable player Juan Gonzalez and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- have made filings alleging serious brain and head injuries. The claims were isolated as part of a Los Angeles Times analysis of more than 3 million filings made to the California Division of Workers’ Compensation. Last month, The Times published a searchable database of claims by football players, and now it's being updated will all other major team sports. Database: workers' comp claims by baseball players Database: workers' comp claims by basketball players Database: workers' comp claims by hockey players Database: workers' comp claims by soccer players Database: workers' comp claims by women's basketball players Although the total...

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Facebook Delays New Privacy Policy

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Karen Bleier/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Facebook's proposed new privacy policy contained a shift in legal language that appeared to put the burden on users to ask Facebook not to use their personal data in advertisements. proposed new privacy policy contained a shift in legal language that appeared to put the burden on users to ask Facebook not to use their personal data in advertisements. Facebook has apparently decided to delay a proposed new privacy policy after a coalition of privacy groups asked the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday to block the changes on the grounds that they violated a 2011 settlement with the regulatory agency. A spokeswoman for the F.T.C. confirmed Thursday that the agency had received the letter but had no further comment. In a statement published by The Los Angeles Times and Politico on Thursday afternoon, Facebook said, “We are taking the time to ensure that user comments are reviewed and taken into consideration to determine whether further updates are necessary and we expect to finalize the process in the coming week.” Asked about the delay, a Facebook spokesman said he was unaware of the latest developments. When it first announced the changes on Aug. 28, Facebook told its 1.2 billion users that the updates were “to take effect on September 5.” The changes, while clarifying how Facebook uses some information about its users, also contained a shift in legal language that appeared to put the...

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