financialpost.org – financial news

THE ADMINISTRATIVE HEARING BUREAU

What We Did in 2001
2001 was a very good year for the Administrative Hearing Bureau. At the start of the year,the Bureau consisted of one administrative law judge and support staff. During the course of the year,a new Chief Administrative Law Judge was hired,and two more judges were hired. Although one judge retired during the year,in 2001,the Administrative Hearing Bureau opened 46 case files and closed 80 files,diminishing the backlog of over 70 cases substantially. Twenty-five proposed decisions were submitted to the Commissioner. Other Administrative Hearing Bureau accomplishments of significance during 2001 include:
● the Web posting of the Administrative Hearing Bureau calendar and precedential decisions for cases involving the workers’compensation insurance rating system (see www.insurance.ca.gov and look for Hearing Calendar and Legal Materials),
● the inception of a case-tracking system using customized software,
● the scanning of all prior decisions onto CD-ROMs for archiving and easy retrieval,and
● the re-engineering of many internal AHB administrative systems.
What We Do All the Time
The administrative law judges staffing the Administrative Hearing Bureau serve as the adjudicators for many of the hearings that insurers,employers and consumers have a right to under the Insurance Code. The disputes heard by the judges in the Administrative Hearing Bureau are those that cannot be resolved through the Consumer Services Division or through an informal process offered by the insurance carriers or the Workers’Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau. In 2001,the cases coming to the Administrative Hearing Bureau1 involved not only disputed rate change applications in Proposition 103 lines of insurance (Ins.Code § 1861.05),but also:
● workers’compensation insurance rating system disputes between employers and the Workers’Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau or an insurance carrier (Ins.Code §§ 11737 and 11753.1),
● appeals from decisions of the California FAIR Plan governing committee (Ins.Code § 10096),
● allegations of noncompliance with the Insurance Code (Ins.Code §§ 1858.1 and 1851.2),
● allegations of noncompliance with the viatical settlement laws (Ins.Code §§ 10113.1 and 10113.2),