Nothing is happening on my claim

This is the most common experience in California workers' compensation and the least written about. Months pass. Calls go unreturned. No one explains anything. You start to wonder whether your file is sitting on someone's desk or whether it exists at all.

Usually it is one of a small number of things — and several of them have deadlines running against you right now.

What is probably happening

You're waiting on a QME appointment. This is the single most common cause of long silence. California allows up to 90 days for the first available appointment, and by agreement up to 120 days. Four months of nothing is the system operating normally, not someone stalling. The full QME timeline is here.

The QME report is overdue. The evaluator has 30 days from the exam to write and serve the report. Extensions are available but limited. If day 31 has passed with no report, this matters urgently — a replacement evaluator is available only if you object to the lateness in writing before the report is served. Object late and the ground disappears.

Liability is still being investigated. The claims administrator has up to 90 days from your claim form to accept or reject — 75 days for safety-officer presumption claims. If that window has closed with no rejection, your injury may be presumed compensable and you should say so.

Nobody filed the case with the Board. If no Application for Adjudication of Claim was ever filed, there is no judge, no case number, and no mechanism forcing anything to move. Nothing will happen, because nothing can.

Nobody filed a Declaration of Readiness. Even with a case on file, hearings are not scheduled automatically. A DOR is what puts you on a calendar. A case with no DOR can sit indefinitely.

Your lawyer's office is slow. It happens, and you are allowed to say so.

What you can do

1. Find out whether a case is actually on file. If you have an ADJ number, a case exists. If you do not, that may be the entire problem. The Board's public case information search will tell you.

2. Send one written question. Email beats phone. Ask specifically: what is the current status, what is the next scheduled event, and what is being waited on? A written question is much harder to leave unanswered than a voicemail, and it creates a record of how long you waited.

3. Check whether any deadline has passed while you waited. Three in particular: - 90 days from your claim form with no rejection → the presumption of compensability - 31 days after a QME exam with no report → object to the lateness in writing, now - 30 days from a treatment denial → the IMR window closing

4. Ask whether a Declaration of Readiness should be filed. If the medical record is developed and the case is not on a calendar, this is usually the answer.

5. Ask whether an expedited hearing is available. Where medical treatment or temporary disability is at issue, expedited hearings exist precisely to break this kind of logjam.

If it's your own attorney who isn't responding

You are entitled to know the status of your case. Put the request in writing and keep a copy.

If that does not work, you have options: you can request your file, consult another attorney for a second opinion, and if necessary substitute counsel. An attorney who has done work on your case may claim a fee, and the judge apportions fees between attorneys — but that is a problem the lawyers resolve between themselves, not a reason you should stay in a case that is not moving.

We are not going to pretend every stalled case is somebody's fault. A great deal of the delay in this system is structural — evaluator shortages, hearing calendars, and a state agency operating with fewer staff than it had a few years ago. But structural delay and neglected files look identical from where you are sitting, and the only way to tell them apart is to ask a specific question in writing and see what comes back.

Frequently asked questions