Improving Dispute Resolution for California's Injured Workers

For more than two decades, the California workers' compensation courts have been criticized for being slow, expensive, and procedurally inconsistent. In response to these concerns, the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation engaged the RAND Institute for Civil Justice to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the courts. The research team found that the courts' problems stem largely from severe understaffing, the failure to upgrade their management information system, and a lack of clear guidance and coordination in the governing rules and procedures. (This document is an Executive Summary of the full report on this study, Improving Dispute Resolution for California's Injured Workers, MR-1425-ICJ, 2003. This Executive Summary includes a CD that contains the text of the full report.).