Lien claimant Basso Pharmacy filed a lien pursuant to Labor Code section 4903(b) on April 17, 2008. The parties stipulated that lien claimant paid an activation fee of $100.00 on December 28, 2015 They further stipulated that lien claimant did not file a lien declaration pursuant to section 4903.05(c)(1).

Lien claimant contends that it was not required to file a declaration pursuant to section 4903.05 because the lien was filed in 2008, and it was never subject to the declaration requirement in section 4903.05(c)(1)

The WCJ found that as a result, lien claimant’s lien was dismissed with prejudice by operation of law as of Monday, July 3, 2017. Basso Pharmacy’s petition for reconsideration was denied in the panel decision of Carrillo v Troon Golf Management -ADJ4642758 (January 2025).

On Reconsideration Basso argued that it could not have legally filed such a declaration because its lien met none of the seven distinct requirements set forth in the Code. It had no obligation at the time of the original lien filing to consider any of these requirements because they in fact did not yet exist.

Sections 4903.05 and 4903.06 were added by Senate Bill (SB) 863 in 2012 and became effective January 1, 2013. Section 4903.05 was amended in 2016 by SB 1160 to add subdivision (c), the declaration requirement. The declaration requirement was described as an “anti-fraud measure.” (Sen. Rules Com., Off. of Sen. Floor Analysis, Analysis of Sen. Bill No. 1160 (2015- 1016 Reg. Sess.), as amended August 29, 2016, p. 4.)

Lien claimants had until Monday, July 3, 2017 at 5:00 p.m., to file a lien declaration. (Henkel Corporation v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (Hernandez) (2018) 3 Cal.Comp.Cases 1424, 1426 [2018 Cal.Wrk.Comp. LEXIS 64] (Appeals Bd. en banc) (writ den.); Rodriguez v. Garden Plating Co. (2017) 82 Cal.Comp.Cases 1390 [2017 Cal.Wrk.Comp. LEXIS 124] (Appeals Bd. en banc).)

The legislative intent for the amendment of section 4903.05 to add the declaration requirement was to impose that requirement on “all lien claimants.” Section 4903.05(c)(1) addresses the declaration requirement for those liens filed after January 1, 2017, and section 4903.05(c)(2) addresses the declaration requirement for those liens filed before January 1, 2017.

The the WCAB panel concluded that “we will not – and cannot upset the legislative intent of the declaration requirement as requested by lien claimant. It is a cardinal rule of statutory construction that courts will choose that interpretation which most nearly effectuates the purpose of the Legislature. (Code Civ. Proc., § 1859.) “‘Once a particular legislative intent has been ascertained, it must be given effect even though it may not be consistent with the strict letter of the statute.’ “

“Accordingly, lien claimant was subject to the requirement to file a declaration pursuant to section 4903.05(c)(2), and had until 5:00 p.m. on Monday, July 3, 2017 to do so. As a result, lien claimant’s lien was dismissed with prejudice by operation of law as of Monday, July 3, 2017 at 5:01 p.m.”

The U.S. property/casualty (P/C) market in 2024 is forecast to have continued its trajectory of improving underwriting results, according to the latest report — Insurance Economics and Underwriting Projections: A Forward View – from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) and Milliman, a collaborating partner. Further premium growth and improved underwriting performance should continue in 2025 and 2026, provided geopolitical and economic conditions remain relatively stable.

Key Performance Indicators

– – Economics: P/C underlying economic growth ended 2024 slightly below U.S. GDP growth at 2.3% versus 2.5% year-over-year (YOY). However, in 2025 and 2026, P/C underlying growth is expected to be above overall GDP growth, an improvement in year-end expectations. A further economic milestone occurred in 2024 with the number of people employed in the U.S. insurance industry surpassing three million.
– – Underwriting: P/C net combined ratio (NCR) estimate of 99.5 is a YOY improvement of 2.2 points, while net written premium (NWP) is estimated to increase 9.5% YOY. Personal lines 2024 NCR estimate improved by nearly 1 point relative to our prior estimates, primarily due to better-than-expected Q3 performance in personal auto. Commercial lines 2024 NCR estimate increased by 1.2 points due to commercial property and general liability. NWP growth rate for personal lines is expected to continue to surpass commercial lines by 9 points in 2024.

Additional Report Highlights

– – Personal lines: Personal auto projected 2024 NCR of 98.8 is 6.1 points better than 2023, with 2024 NWP growth rate of 14.0% the second highest in over 15 years. Homeowners projected 2024 NCR of 104.8 is a 6.1-point improvement over 2023 despite an above-normal hurricane season.
– – Commercial lines: Commercial property projected 2024 NCR of 91.2 is 3.3 points worse than 2023, with Hurricane Milton projected to be the worst catastrophe for commercial property insurance since Hurricane Ian in 2022 Q3. General liability projected 2024 NCR of 103.7 is 3.6 points worse than actual 2023 experience.

“Commercial lines continue to have better underwriting results than personal lines, but the gap is closing,” said Dale Porfilio, FCAS, MAAA, Triple-I’s chief insurance officer. “The impact from natural catastrophes such as Hurricane Helene in Q3 2024 and Hurricane Milton in Q4 2024 significantly impacted commercial property. The substantial rate increases necessary to offset inflationary pressures on losses have driven the improved results in personal auto and homeowners,” he added.

Turning to workers’ compensation, Donna Glenn, FCAS, MAAA, chief actuary at the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), provided a preview of this year’s average lost cost level changes and discussed the long-term financial health of the workers compensation system.

“The 2025 average loss cost decrease of 6% is moderate, which will inevitably have implications on the overall net written premium change,” Glenn said. She added that the –6% average loss cost level change in 2025 is notably different than was seen in 2024: an average decrease of more than 9%, representing the largest average decrease since before the pandemic.

“Payroll for 2025 will develop throughout the year resulting from both wage and employment levels. Therefore, overall premium will become clearer as the year progresses,” Glenn said.

Sutter Health is a comprehensive, integrated health system in northern California with 27 hospitals, 300 ambulatory sites, and imaging modalities.

Sutter Health and GE HealthCare just announced a seven-year strategic enterprise partnership, known as a Care Alliance, that aims to increase access to innovative imaging services and create a more seamless and coordinated experience for clinicians and patients across the Sutter Health system. This Care Alliance marks one of GE HealthCare’s largest ever enterprise strategic partnerships.

According to a report by Bloomberg the agreement is expected to generate $1 billion in revenue over the span of the partnership, GE Healthcare said. It marks one of the largest deals for the medical technology company since the firm was spun off from General Electric Co. two years ago.

GE HealthCare CEO Peter Arduini said he expects to enter into more strategic partnerships as consolidation of the health system continues and as the firm evolves from an imaging company to providing a variety of health-care solutions. Since the spinoff, the company has entered into more than 25 strategic partnerships, including a research and product development program with the Mayo Clinic and a 10-year partnership with the Ohio-based University Hospitals.

The first key focus area of the Care Alliance is an accelerated technology program across the Sutter Health system that will focus on some of the most advanced AI-powered imaging technology and digital solutions available to patients, including PET/CT, SPECT/CT, MRI, CT, X-ray, nuclear medicine and ultrasound. GE HealthCare’s interventional, mammography, diagnostic cardiology, maternal and infant care and anesthesia solutions will also be included in Sutter Health’s ambulatory care centers, helping to address the growing need for care outside of the traditional hospital setting.

This comprehensive technology refresh covers the breadth of GE HealthCare’s portfolio of solutions, providing clinicians with innovative options to meet changing patient needs more efficiently and quickly.

Imaging and ultrasound solutions, enabled by digital and AI advancements, will be implemented across the entire healthcare system over several years, reducing variation and providing the innovation clinicians need to best serve patients. Innovative new solutions include GE HealthCare’s Omni Legend PET/CT, StarGuide SPECT/CT and Vscan Air™ SL ultrasound with Caption AI™ software. Notably, GE HealthCare’s AIR™ Recon DL MR image reconstruction will be deployed and utilizes deep learning algorithms to improve image quality and MRI scan times. By optimizing image reconstruction AIR™ Recon DL reduces artifacts, and enhances image clarity and scan times, enabling clinicians to obtain high-quality diagnostic images while improving patient comfort and workflow efficiency.

The strategic partnership also supports Sutter Health’s larger access strategy, which includes opening dozens of new care sites across Northern California in the next few years. Additionally, it will further support the health system’s expansion of advanced service lines and destination centers of excellence including areas such as heart and vascular care, cancer care and neurosciences. This includes access to new technology and digital optimization to expand clinical procedures and services, helping enable precise, high-quality patient care from early screening to diagnosis to treatment to monitoring.

For example, Sutter Health plans to build a new cancer center on Sutter’s Memorial Medical Center campus in the California Central Valley and recently announced two new flagship campuses in Silicon Valley with specialty care focuses. Potential future areas of enhanced services across the Sutter Health system could include mental health, orthopedics, women’s health and pediatrics.

Sutter Health will adopt technology at a more rapid pace with an accelerated upgrade schedule, including the latest software releases to prevent obsolescence and keep technologies current over the long-term. The service delivery model will help ensure consistent operations and minimize unexpected disruptions—with patient safety, efficiency and reliability in mind.

The agreement will also include significant investment in Sutter Health’s workforce development programs to include ongoing training and education for technologists, nurses and physicians through Sutter Health University and other learning opportunities, which includes supporting the next generation of clinicians who are reflective of the communities they serve.

GE HealthCare plans to assist Sutter Health in the design of a scalable workforce and talent development program that includes talent pathway community outreach, collaborations with radiologic technologist schools, as well as talent acquisition, development and retention, including leadership and clinical learning journeys. The program will aim at addressing the critical clinician shortage and support healthcare providers’ clinical staffing needs.

Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT) is a not-for-profit organization. It’s members include over 30 accomplished academics, professors, and scientists from the medical schools and related departments of our most prestigious universities, including Yale, Harvard, UCLA, UCSF, UCI and Brown.

These academics and scientists represent a cross section of every discipline relevant to the licensure of the Pfizer vaccine and include many of the best our country has to offer when it comes to reviewing and assessing the appropriateness and validity of the FDA’s decision-making in licensing of the Pfizer COVID Vaccine.

In furtherance of its mission, on August 27, 2021, PHMPT submitted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request to the FDA seeking all data and information pertaining to the application and approval of the Pfizer Vaccine. Federal law (21 C.F.R. § 601.51(e)) provides that: “After a license has been issued, the following data and information in the biological product file are immediately available for public disclosure unless extraordinary circumstances are shown.” PHMPT desires to perform its own independent analysis of the safety and efficacy the the vaccine, especially in light of the vaccine mandates being promulgated at the federal and state levels.

In the Second Joint Status Report following filing this case, the FDA assessed that there are more than 329,000 pages potentially responsive to the PHMPT FOIA request. The FDA asked that the Court limit the FOIA response to no more than 500 pages per month. This would be nearly 55 years or until about 2077.

The FDA lost the battle. On January 6, 2022 a federal judge soundly rejected the FDA’s request and ordered the FDA to produce all the data at a rate of 55,000 pages per month. In doing so the judge noted that “the Court recognizes the ‘unduly burdensome’ challenges that this FOIA request may present to the FDA.”

The January 6, 2022 order set a production schedule, which was partially modified on February 2, 2022. The production schedule required the FDA to “produce 80,000 pages on or before May 2, June 1, and July 1, 2022; 70,000 pages on or before August 1, 2022; and then 55,000 pages on or before the first business day of each month thereafter.”

On December 19, 2023, in a Joint Status Report, the FDA notified the Court that it had completed its production of responsive documents. However, on April 23, 2024, in a related case Plaintiff learned that the FDA may have identified but not produced an Emergency Use Authorization (“EUA”) file.

Thereafter, on July 17, 2024, in its response to Plaintiff’s adequacy-of-search letter, the FDA disclosed that it had in fact identified but not produced an EUA file for the Pfizer Vaccine. Because the Parties were unable to resolve this issue without court intervention, the matter was briefed. And on December 6, 2024, the Court entered an order finding that the EUA file was responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request and must be produced. The Court ordered the FDA to produce the EUA file on or before June 30, 2025.

This month marks three years after the 2022 court order, and the PHMPT and FDA continue litigating compliance with the federal law mandating the publics ability to review the FDA information used to justify approval of the Pfizer Vaccine. The FDA now requests that the Court not only delay the production of the EUA file, but indefinitely stay it. In its Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment, Plaintiff specifically requested that the Court order the FDA to produce the EUA file on or before February 20, 2025.

In denying the FDA’s recent request for a stay, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman expressed his exhaustion with the agency’s “continued attempts to pause the production of information related to one of the preeminent events of our time – the Covid-19 pandemic.” He ordered that the FDA must release the requested “emergency use authorization” file by June 30, 2025.

Three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement. Grade-school teachers rank second, with 61% viewing them highly, while military officers, pharmacists and medical doctors also earn high trust from majorities of Americans.

The least trusted professions, with more than half of U.S. adults saying their ethics are low or very low, are lobbyists, members of Congress and TV reporters.

Of the remaining occupations measured in the Dec. 2-18, 2024, poll, six (including police officers, clergy and judges) are viewed more positively than negatively by Americans, although with positive ratings not reaching the majority level. The other nine, notably including bankers, lawyers and business executives, are seen more negatively than positively, with no more than 50% rating their ethics low.

Today’s rank-order aligns with the public’s evaluations of U.S. occupations for the past two decades. Over this period, medical practitioners, grade-school teachers and military officers have been the most trusted professions, while political, sales, business and media-related jobs have constituted the least.

Nurses have earned the highest rating in every year but one since Gallup added them to the annual survey in 1999. The exception was 2001, when firefighters — included only that year — earned a record 90% trust rating after their heroism in responding to the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

Gallup began measuring public trust in various professions in 1976, initially covering 14 jobs. Over the years, the list has changed, with some occupations added and others removed. Since 1999, 11 professions have been tracked annually, while others have been included periodically.

The average very high/high ethics rating of the core 11 professions has decreased from routinely 40% or higher in the early 2000s to closer to 35% during most of the 2010s. It rose slightly in 2020, to a seven-year high of 38%, reflecting enhanced public trust in healthcare workers and teachers during the pandemic. Thereafter, the average declined each year through 2023, when it reached 30%, and it held there in 2024. This mirrors the long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions.

The relatively low average honesty and ethics ratings in 2023 and 2024 reflect diminished scores for a few professions, in particular, since 2021. That’s the latest year that most of the professions on this year’s list — all but funeral home directors — were rated at the same time.

– – Trust in medical doctors has fallen 14 percentage points since 2021. After reaching a historical high of 77% in 2020, doctors’ ethics rating not only returned to its 2019/pre-pandemic level of 65% but, at 53%, is now the lowest since the mid-1990s.
– – Day care providers, pharmacists, nurses and nursing home operators — all of which had enjoyed enhanced reviews during year one or year two of the pandemic — have since dropped below their average pre-pandemic ratings.
– – Judges have seen a 10-point decline to 28% in their honesty and ethics rating, by far the lowest for this profession which, before 2021, had scored between 43% and 53%.
– – Views of the police have been variable, but after earning majority trust in 2020 and 2021, their rating slipped to 45% in 2023 and 44% today.
– – Clergy have lost another six points in public esteem since 2021, continuing the long-term downward trend in trust in that profession.

Ratings of the other 15 professions measured in both years haven’t changed appreciably.

The long-term trends paint a slightly different picture, reflecting broader political and societal changes this century.

From the time Gallup started rating all 23 professions in the early 2000s through this year, there has been a 26-point decline in the perceived honesty and ethics of clergy, the most for any group. The proportion saying the clergy have high or very high ethics is down from an average 56% in 2000-2009 to 30% today.

The decline in Americans’ religiosity over this period contributes to the loss of trust in clergy, as the growing proportion of nonreligious adults express lower trust than religious adults. However, the Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandals also appear to have contributed to downticks in trust in clergy, including in 2002 and 2018.

The second-most-significant decline in ethics ratings this century has been for judges, who have experienced a 21-point drop since the early 2000s. Some of this change occurred early on, falling from an average 49% in 2000-2009 to 46% in 2007 and to 43% in 2020. But since then, high ratings for judges have tumbled to 28%, paralleling recent downturns in Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court as well as the judicial system and courts more broadly. The high court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade as well as various legal cases against Donald Trump since 2020 could explain declines in these ratings by both major parties.