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Following nearly 8,000 lightning strikes that set more than 800 wildfires across Northern California, a meterologist is predicting much worse conditions throughout the rest of the fire season. Thousands of firefighters battled the blazes this week from the ground and air. The lightning-caused fires have scorched tens of thousands of acres and forced hundreds of residents to flee their homes, though few buildings have been destroyed, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. From San Francisco to Los Angeles, cities have only seen a tiny fraction of the rainfall they normally receive at… Read More »California Fire Season Update

An employee got into an argument with a supervisor at a western Kentucky plastics plant early Wednesday, then shot and killed five people before killing himself, police and a company official said.What coverage will be triggered : Worker’s Compensation or Employer’s Liability?If it will be proven than the argument started because of employer – than employer’s liability coverage may be triggered; however, it is not clear whether Director’s and Officer’s coverage shoul apply to such loss.

An attorney and accountant have been charged with participating in a “rent-a-patient” scam described by authorities as the largest medical insurance fraud case in the nation. Dickson, who faces 106 felony counts, is accused of using his law practice to launder as much as $3 million through attorney-client trust accounts and creating fraudulent documents to disguise patient recruiting activities. The charges include grand theft, insurance fraud, money laundering and perjury. He faces up to 73 years in prison if convicted of all counts. Harnen, who faces 118 counts, is accused of helping recruiters and administrators hide their illegal activities by… Read More »Orange County Medical Scam

Wildfires, again, in my home state of California. People are looking for maps of where they are at, so here are some resources:

California’s Department of Insurance concider bringing “pay-as-you-drive” automobile insurance to the state. According to the DOI, California Insurance Code requires automobile insurance rates to be based on three mandatory factors in decreasing order of importance, with the second mandatory factor is “the number of miles [the insured] drives annually.” Under the current regulations, the annual mileage factor is defined as an estimate of the number of miles an insured vehicle will be driven in the next year. The regulations specify how the mileage estimate may be determined. However, insurers establish their own mileage rating brackets for rating purposes. Mileage rating… Read More »Pros and Cons of Pay-As-You-Drive Auto Insurance

Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services Insurance Division has published the 2007 Annual Complaint Statistics, ranking major insurers based on their complaint records in six common lines of insurance: personal auto, health, homeowner, life, annuities, and long-term care. This report ranks major insurers by their complaint records, which are based on the number of confirmed consumer complaints closed by the Insurance Division and the amount of premium dollars written by the insurers. According to DCBS, the report allows consumers to see at a glance how a company compares with its competitors; the information should help consumer to make sound… Read More »Annual Insurance Complaint Statistics Published in Oregon

A congressional report found two out of three work-related illnesses and injuries may be going unreported, and called into question federal regulators’ claims that workplace problems are declining. The House Committee on Education and Labor, which released the report in Washington, D.C., plans a hearing Tuesday, June 24, 2008, focusing on whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is adequately enforcing construction safety rules. The committee is expected to hear questions about recent construction deaths in New York and on the Las Vegas Strip, where officials say 12 workers have died in resort projects since January 2007. The committee chairman,… Read More »Workplace Injuries Unreported

Employers must show that there was a reason other than age discrimination in cases where lay-offs appear to target older workers, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The case—Clifford B. Meacham et al. vs. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory—involved a companywide staff reduction in which 30 of 31 salaried employees fired were 40 years of age or older. In 2000, a jury found that the bias was unintentional, but that the older workers were disproportionately affected by the lay-offs and granted monetary awards to 17 former employees of the lab, which is a unit of Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. A panel… Read More »Court Rules for Employees in Age Bias Case

Owners of nearly 90 percent of the structures destroyed in last month’s wildfire in the Santa Cruz Mountains did not properly clear flammable brush from the property, state fire officials say. California law requires property owners in forested areas to remove or reduce most vegetation within 100 feet of a building. But a state report found that most of the 132 structures destroyed by the fire had “poor defensible space quality.” That figure includes 63 homes and 69 outbuildings destroyed in the mountains above Watsonville. Fire officials say it’s likely that fewer homes would have been destroyed if homeowners had… Read More »Homeowners Aren’t Protecting Homes from Fires