Legal Question in Workers Comp in California
Deadline for RU-94
I am an employer who has an employee that became permananent and stationary. I instructed the attorney to submit an offer of modified/ alternative work to the employee. Our company attorney never submitted the offer, and now claims that it is too late to do the offer. She says an RU-94 can only be submitted within 30 days of learning the employee is P&S. My HR manual does not read that way, and only that the employee must accept the offer within 30 days.
Is my attorney misleading me?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Deadline for RU-94
As a precautionary measure, send the offer of modified work anyway. I suspect that you are looking at the 15% increase in PD for an employer with over 50 employees since you have a company attorney.
Consider the following:
As of 1/1/04 the employee is only entitled to voucher benefits which cover education. Thus "missing" the deadline may not be so disasterous depending upon the rating of the injury. However, if the employee was TTD and modified work were offered, then TTD payments are at issue, because the employee should not have received TTD when modified work was available.
My suggestion is to submit a job description to the Primary Treating Physician and ask whether or not the employee can realistically perform the job. It may slow the settlement process and applicant's attorney may object, but the court may allow you to obtain a supplement PTP report which can then be used as a basis to offer modified work and circumvent possible problems with timely service.
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