After some additional testing and feedback, I have launched the Ogilvie Calculator aka DFEC Calculator aka Diminished Future Earning Capacity Calculator.1
To all of my friendly beta-testers: Thank you!
So, what are you waiting for? Signing up for this website is totally free and takes 30 seconds. Log in, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
The First Appellate District of the Court of Appeal of the State of California has affirmed the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board in Benson v. WCAB and the Permanente Medical Group, affirmed (2/10/2009). The Court of Appeals held, in relevant part, that “[t]he Wilkinson doctrine is inconsistent with the apportionment reforms enacted by Senate Bill No. 899.”
The basic upshot is that barring “limited circumstances” each distinct industrial injury will require its own Award.
First Ogilvie and Almaraz/Guzman, now Benson? Its been an exciting two weeks to be a Workers’ Compensation attorney.
I launched the Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator on Saturday morning to a select group of beta-testers. 1 When I upgraded a person’s access to the website they had no problem seeing the workers’ compensation calculator.
Unfortunately, not one of them was able to actually use the thing. Last night my wife suggests the problem might be, “maybe they are using a different version or its not refreshed or something”?
And you know what? She was right. My wife, the hacker.2
I’ve written several protections into these calculators to insulate my users from having to deal with problems or bugs from newly installed code. I would much rather a user sees nothing than get a wrong answer. And nothing is exactly what my users saw. I had remembered to allow my beta testers to see the Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator – but forgot to give them access to calculator.
So, the beta-test period will continue for another day or two while I await feedback from my users.
If you’d like to see what the Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator looks like or want to try to use it, just sign up for free and shoot me an e-mail asking for access.
I’m going to delay the launch of the Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator for a day or two. 1 I believe it works just fine, but I would like to test it a little more. This said, I will grant anyone who is interested access to this calculator.
Why the delay? Well…
The interesting thing about taking apart a set of calculations is that you find all sorts of “hidden steps” to the calculation. The majority in Ogilvie does a respectible job of going through the steps of this new formula and even gives several examples.
When performing most calculations one will need to round numbers at some point. However, rounding almost invariably takes place at the very end. In the case of the Ogilvie calculations, it appears that the WCAB rounds various figures throughout the calculation.
Even though the DFEC rebuttal calculator was giving correct answers, the fourth or fifth decimal places on some intermediary figures occasionally did not coming out right. It took me a little while to track down all the spots where the WCAB was implicitly rounding their figures (and to what decimal place!).
I am fairly confident the calculator will work without a hitch, but I’m going to test it a little more before I make it available to the public. If you’re interested in testing this Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator, please drop me a line and let me know.
If you’re not a registered user for this website, its free to sign up and free to use all the workers’ compensation calculators. Seriously, free as in free!
Earlier today I installed an Ogilvie v. City and County of SF DFEC Rebuttal calculator into the free workers’ compensation calculators page on this website. 123 For the moment it is only available to people who have signed up for this website and asked to be a beta tester. If all goes well, I’ll flip a switch and make it available to the public on Monday morning.
At the moment it requires four pieces of information:
Once you add in that information, click “Calculate” and it should crunch through the formula and give you a response. The WCAB in Ogilvie suggested several possible outcomes to this formula:
Obviously, there are innumerable factors that go into considerations of whether a Judge (or the WCAB) would find the DFEC portion of the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule to be rebutted. This calculation and the information relied upon in performing this calculation cannot be taken as a guarranteed method of rebutting the DFEC portion of the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule.
If you’re not a registered user for this website, its free to sign up and free to use all the workers’ compensation calculators. That’s right: free as in free.
I put out the call for help testing my Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator and got a bite! 1 I wrote it two days ago and refined it a little bit last night.2
If anyone else is interested in helping test this Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator, please drop me a line and let me know.
The ideal tester is someone who:
If you’re not a registered user for this website, its free to sign up and free to use all the workers’ compensation calculators.
You heard me, free as in free.
Some crazy stuff has happened in the last two days. 1 Two big en banc decisions were just handed down from the WCAB. Here they are, hot off the presses and ready for downloading:
Of the two cases, I enjoyed Ogilvie v. City and County of San Francisco much more. This case describes to what extent the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule may be rebutted2 and how one might go about doing this.
Pages 22 through 32 are basically nothing but math. 3 These pages detail the information and methodology necessary to rebut the DFEC portion of the 2005 Schedule.
Last night I wrote a prototype calculator which will allow you to determine whether you may or may not be able to rebut the DFEC portion of the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule. This calculator would only perform the DFEC rebuttal calculations suggested in the majority opinion, since this is now the law of the land. My plan is to test it this weekend and launch it Monday.
However, if anyone is interested in helping me test it, I would appreciate the help. Just drop me a line and I’ll give you the link as soon as its ready.
In the meantime, if you want to crunch the numbers yourself (or follow along with the WCAB in Ogilvie), you will probably find Table A and Table B page 1-7 of the 2005 PDRS to be very helpful.
FYI, there are a lot of “footnotes” in Ogilvie that reference various online documents or websites. I’ve downloaded a copy or provided a screenshot of each of these pages for your reference:
Right after “workers’ compensation calculator” and “permanent disability calculator,” the top search term for people coming to this website is “multiple disabilities table.”
If you want to combine multiple disabilities for injuries before 2005,1 you can:
According to a recent DIR news bulletin on November 17, 2008 the new WCAB Rules of Practice and Procedure were approved by the Office of Administrative Law and filed with the Secretary of the State and (apparently) made effective that same day. If you haven’t already reviewed the new regulations, now’s a good time. You can check them using the above links or download it here:
New WCAB Rules of Practice and Procedure (Effective 11-17-2008)
Since the new WCAB rules became effective, the new EAMS forms are now mandatory. The exceptions named in the above bulletin are:
Did you know there’s a handbook for the new Optical Character Recognition EAMS forms? You can check it out here or download it here:
EAMS OCR Handbook (Rev. 11-24-2008)
Calculator Performance Issue: It has come to my attention that some users are having problems with the “Body Part” code finder. This problem apparently occurs when you click on the “Body Part” button and just see a spinning blue “waiting” disc instead of a list of body parts.
Temporary Fix: Even though the Body Part code search function does not work for some users, the rating functions still appears to work just fine. If you know the Body Part code, you should be able to enter it manually in the box provided. If you are performing a 2005 schedule rating, please use the full 8 digit body part code.
Permanent Solution: I am working on a fix for this problem and will update this website as soon as I am able. I cannot be sure, but I suspect that the problem is being caused, in part, by the recent increase in the popularity of this website.1
I value your business and appreciate your patience. If this problem persists, I will create a second website exclusively for your use.
In the meantime, if you’re having problems with the calculators, however small, please e-mail through the Contact Us link at the top. The more information I have about the problem, the better able I will be to diagnose and fix it.
Thank you again for your patience.
Sincerely,
Jay Shergill
