While elite hotshot crews were fighting California wildfires, battle lines were being drawn over molten issues between workers and employers as they wait for the California Supreme Court to determine whether the state's long-standing policy against discrimination in all its invidious forms will cause the equally important public interest in not rewarding illegal conduct to go up in smoke. The force driving this do-or-die confrontation is Salas vs. Sierra Chemical Co., 76 Cal. Comp. Cases 768, 129 Cal.Rptr.3d 263, a case that has for the moment left Senate Bill No. 1818, the Fair Employment Housing Act, (Gov. Code, § 12900 et seq) and even the foundational precepts underlying the summary judgment standard burning like scorched earth in a summertime drought...read more.

With workers' compensation costs on a relentless march upwards, studies suggesting that growth in some areas could possibly be tempered are sure to spark some interest and help validate what we intuitively deduce as cost savings. A recent example is Outcomes of the Introduction of a Standardized Fitness-for-Duty Evaluation of Commercial Truck Drivers on the Incidence of Low Back Injuries and Workers' Compensation Costs, published in the April 2014 edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The study, which concludes that costs associated with lower back injuries in commercial truck drivers could be reduced if...read more.