Dr. Eduardo Anguizola, who is facing multiple counts of insurance fraud filed by Orange County prosecutors, is one the plaintiffs who claims Labor Code 4615 – the automatic lien stay law – violates the procedural component of the due process clause because it immediately stays all liens without notice or a hearing. His motion in federal court for a preliminary injunction halting the implementation of the new law has been pending since early this year.
As the Anguizola case headed for its final hearing on September 28, Governor Brown signed AB 1422 into law. According to the Governor’s signing memo he said “I am signing AB 1422 which is clean-up legislation to last year’s workers’ compensation anti-fraud bills, AB 1244 and SB 1160. Those measures established new requirements and authority to help prevent and reduce fraud in the workers’ compensation system. Specifically, they require the suspension of medical providers who have been convicted of crimes involving fraud or abuse. They also require placing a stay on any liens filed by providers charged with such crimes (pending disposition of the charges).”
AB 1422 contains a new LC 4615 subsection (e) which reads “The automatic stay required by this section shall not preclude the appeals board from inquiring into and determining within a workers’ compensation proceeding whether a lien is stayed pursuant to subdivision (a) or whether a lien claimant is controlled by a physician, practitioner, or provider.”
The DIR filed a “Notice of New Law” in federal court the day before the September 28, hearing set before Judge Wu which would have been the final hearing before his ruling. Accordingly, Judge Wu continued the September 28 hearing to October 19, and provided the parties with a briefing schedule to discuss the impact of AB 1422, the newly passed law.
In the “final” closing brief just filed in support of a preliminary injunction, attorneys for the lien claimants respond to the new law saying that they are making “a facial constitutional attack on a statute, which cannot be cured by a hastily passed amendment.”
They go on to claim that “Recognizing the deficiencies in their evidence, the State appears to have corralled the Legislature into intervening by rushing through ‘amended’ legislation in the hopes of making an end run around this litigation, accompanied with a signing message directed to this Court.”
They go on to argue that “the California Legislature’s recent amendment to Section 4615 does not repair the law’s constitutional defects. Indeed, the amendment merely serves to highlight those defects while doing nothing to ameliorate the Due Process and Sixth Amendment quagmire created by the law. Its language establishes no right to a hearing, which is required under both the Due Process Clause and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Sixth Amendment.”
They support the argument by saying “Notably, subsection (e) does not provide any stayed lien claimant with the right to a hearing. It merely states that the stay ‘shall not preclude the appeals board’ from ‘inquiring into and determining’ whether a lien is stayed. Id. The statute appears to give the appeals board (not workers’ compensation judges) the limited ability to consider the narrow issue of whether the lien falls within the scope of Section 4615 and therefore, whether the appeals board is required to treat it as automatically stayed.”
“Notably, it does not require the appeals board to allow a lien claimant to be heard on this issue, or even to consider any protest raised by a lien claimant – it merely gives the appeals board permission to consider such a grievance.”
They go on to conclude that “In other words, new subsection (e) gives lien claimants no right at all to a hearing, even when it is abundantly clear that a lien claimant should not have been on the published list, the secret list, the double-secret list, or any other list that might be available to the appeals board. Although the appeals board can choose to hear what the lien claimant has to say, there is no direction that the appeals board must make an inquiry and determine whether the law applies. This does not suffice to protect lien claimants’ due process rights.”
The DIR will file their response by October 10, and Judge Wu will hold another hearing in federal court on October 19.