Corrections

Why this page exists

This site publishes statutes, regulations, case law, and dollar figures. Rates change annually and sometimes mid-year. Regulations get renumbered. Statutes sunset. Offices move. A page that was accurate in January can be wrong in July without anyone touching it.

Most legal websites handle that by quietly editing and moving on. We would rather show the work.

Our standard: every statutory citation, case, number, and regulation on this site is verified against a primary source before publication — not against another firm's page and not against a summary. When we get something wrong, we fix it, we say what it was, and we date the fix.

A reference site that never publishes a correction is not being read carefully enough.

How to tell us

If you find an error on this site, tell us. Write to [email protected] with the page address and what you believe is wrong, or call (213) 380-9310.

Why that address and not a dedicated one. [email protected] is the firm's existing, monitored mailbox. A corrections@ address that nobody reads is worse than no address at all — it looks like accountability and delivers none. If the volume ever justifies a separate box, this line changes.

We will check it against the primary source, fix it if it is wrong, and list it here.

Corrections

September 5, 2026 — Los Angeles County: "four" district offices, and the table under it listed five

What was wrong: our Los Angeles County page opened with "Four district offices serve Los Angeles County" — and then listed five: Los Angeles, Van Nuys, Marina del Rey, Long Beach, and Pomona. Pomona is in Los Angeles County. The Spanish page carried the same count in four places.

What is correct: five. The table was right; the sentence above it was not. Both languages now say five.

Two more, the same day. The Spanish homepage and the district offices hub were shipping a section headed "Implementation notes" — instructions written for the people building this site, not for a reader — as the last thing on the page. And the homepage's contact card said a person calls back "usually the same day." Our contact page promises one business day and nothing faster, so the card now says what the page says.

Why it happened: the count was written before the table and never re-read against it; the notes were in the same file as the page and nothing checked for them by name; the "same day" line was written once, in one place, without a source.

Caught by: rebuilding the three homepages side by side, which put each language's facts next to the others'. The check that exists for batch notes now names "Implementation notes" and fails the build on it.

August 19, 2026 — Temporary disability, pre-launch

What was wrong: our prior-year temporary disability table listed 2023 as $230.95 minimum / $1,539.71 maximum and 2022 as $203.44 / $1,356.31.

What is correct: 2023 was $242.86 / $1,619.15 (DWC Newsline 2022-95) and 2022 was $230.95 / $1,539.71 (Newsline 2021-109). Our table was shifted one year early from 2023 backward.

Why it happened: we assumed the rates rise every January. They did not in 2024. The State Average Weekly Wage fell in the twelve months ending March 31, 2023 — from $1,651 to $1,642 — so no adjustment was triggered and the 2024 figures carried over unchanged from 2023 (Newsline 2023-84). One flat year silently shifts every row below it. This is the same mistake that produced the error we had already identified in the prior version of this site, arrived at from the opposite direction.

What else was affected: the benefits calculator, which would have returned the wrong weekly rate for any date of injury in 2022, 2023, or 2024. Both are corrected, and every figure now reads from a single canonical rate record with its source attached rather than being restated page by page. That structural change is the real fix; this correction is only the symptom.

Caught by: an internal consistency audit that found two of our own pages disagreeing with each other. Neither had been published.

August 20, 2026 — three citations checked against primary sources; two were wrong

This one came out of building the Spanish side. Expanding a translated page puts the English page's citation next to the Spanish page's citation, and where they disagreed, one of them was wrong. Three disagreements surfaced; all three were read against the primary source.

1 — 8 CCR § 10744, not § 10742, is the objection rule. One Spanish deadline table attributed the 10 calendar days to object to a Declaration of Readiness to § 10742. Read at dir.ca.gov: § 10742 governs filing a Declaration of Readiness. § 10744 is Objection to Declaration of Readiness to Proceed, and it is the one carrying the ten days and the waiver — "shall be deemed to have waived any and all objections to proceeding on the issues specified in the declaration, absent extraordinary circumstances." Every other page on this site, in both languages, already cited § 10744. One table did not.

2 — Labor Code § 4610.6(j), not (i), is the five-working-day authorization clock. A Spanish IMR calendar attributed the employer's five working days to authorize an overturned treatment to § 4610.6(i). The statute puts both employer clocks in (j) — five working days to authorize future services, twenty days to reimburse services already provided. (i) is the remand provision: when a determination is reversed, the dispute goes back for a new IMR by a different review organization. Both subdivisions appear on the same page and had been transposed on one row.

Why that one mattered. Those are the two deadlines that run against the employer after a worker wins. A reader who quotes the wrong subdivision at an adjuster has handed them a reason not to engage.

3 — § 4662(a)(3) says "practically total paralysis," full stop. One Spanish page paraphrased the conclusive presumption as "a spine injury resulting in permanent and complete paralysis of the legs." The statute says "An injury resulting in a practically total paralysis" — it does not require the spine, and "practically total" is deliberately not "complete." The paraphrase was narrower than the law, which on a total-disability page costs a reader the argument.

Why they happened: all three were paraphrases carried forward without being re-read against the source. The English pages were right in every case — the defect was in translation and in one table row, and neither is caught by any check that only reads one language.

How they were caught: a cross-language consistency gate that compares every statute, figure and deadline on a Spanish page against its English source, and reports each direction separately. The Spanish-asserts-what-English-does-not direction is the one that found these.

August 20, 2026 — twenty-six pages carried a line written for a batch, not a reader

What was wrong: content on this site is authored ten pages to a file, and anything after the last page's front matter belongs to that page as far as every build tool is concerned. So a shared reviewer line and a shared source list, written for the batch, rendered on whichever page happened to sit last in each file.

What that looked like. The amputation page told readers "All four pages reviewed by Jamey Teitell…" — meaningless to someone reading one page. The Spanish warehouse page carried a nail-salon chemical-hazards link from OSHA and an AMA Guides disclaimer belonging to a different page in the same file.

What is correct: twenty-six pages fixed. The reviewer line now reads "Reviewed by…" on every page, the build-team notes were moved out of page content entirely, and the misplaced nail-salon source and disclaimer were removed from the warehouse page.

Why nothing caught it: every existing gate passed. The links resolved, the front matter was complete, the pages were reachable, the citations were real. It was only wrong to a reader — which is a category of defect a link checker cannot see.

How it was caught: an agent expanding the Spanish warehouse page noticed a nail-salon citation on it and refused to reproduce it. A new gate now fails the build on batch-authoring artifacts in page content.

August 20, 2026 — the IMR deadlines verified verbatim; a 75-day gap closed in the tools

§ 4610.5(h)(1) — verified verbatim, and this is the highest-consequence deadline on the site. "(A) For formulary disputes, 10 days after the service of the utilization review decision to the employee. (B) For all other medical treatment disputes, 30 days." Both figures correct as published on four pages.

§ 4610.5(h)(3) — verified, including the citation. Where the employer fails to comply with subdivision (f), "the time limitations for the employee to submit a request for independent medical review shall not begin to run." Subdivision (f) requires a one-page form and an addressed envelope. Our pages already told readers to check for both, quoted the statute, and cited (h)(3) correctly. No change needed — the strongest section on the site by this measure.

§ 5402 and § 4650 — verified. One working day to authorize treatment, $10,000 cap pending a decision, first payment within 14 days, every two weeks thereafter, and the late-payment increase of 10 percent paid "without application." All correct.

But § 5402(b) surfaced a gap in the tools.

The presumption of compensability attaches at 90 days — except for the occupational illnesses covered by §§ 3212–3212.85 and 3212.9–3213.2, where it is 75 days. Those are the public safety presumptions: cancer, heart trouble, hypertension, pneumonia, tuberculosis, meningitis, bloodborne disease, MRSA, biochemical exposure, and post-traumatic stress.

The deep pages had this right — the claim process page, the denied claims page, the deadlines table and the public safety presumptions page all carry the 75-day rule.

Both deadline calculators did not, and neither did my claim is delayed — which is the page a person whose claim has been sitting actually lands on, and which quotes § 5402(b)(1) with a whole section headed "The 90-day clock."

A firefighter with a cancer claim reading that page was being given the wrong number, on the page most likely to be read by exactly that person. Fixed on the page and in both the English and Spanish deadline calculators, with the citation tightened to § 5402(b)(1)–(2).

The lesson is the same one as the MTUS undercount, in a new place: the deep page being right does not help a reader who never reaches it. Check where the reader actually lands, not where the rule is best explained.

August 20, 2026 — four more provisions verified; two pages improved

Checked against the statutory text. All four were correct as published. Two produced improvements anyway.

§ 4656(c)(3) — the 240-week list. Verified verbatim. Nine conditions: acute and chronic hepatitis B, acute and chronic hepatitis C, amputations, severe burns, HIV, high-velocity eye injuries, chemical burns to the eyes, pulmonary fibrosis, chronic lung disease. Every page on this site that reproduces the full list reproduces all nine, and the catastrophic injury page gives it with the statute's own subdivision letters. No omissions found — which was worth confirming, since a truncated statutory list is exactly the defect we found in the MTUS tracker the day before.

§ 4604.5(c)(1) — the visit caps. Verified: "no more than 24 chiropractic, 24 occupational therapy, and 24 physical therapy visits per industrial injury." Separate caps, not a shared pool, as stated.

Improvement made. Our page gave only the post-surgical exception. § 4604.5(c)(2)(A) also lets the employer authorize additional visits in writing — and nobody volunteers that. The page now says so, and says to ask. Can I see a chiropractor?

§ 4600(h) — home health care. Verified: the employer is not liable for services provided "more than 14 days prior to the date of the employer's receipt of the physician's prescription."

Improvement made. Our page said the valuable thing was to get the prescription written today. The statute keys on the employer's receipt. A prescription written on the 1st and mailed on the 20th protects only from the 6th — nineteen days gone. The page now says get it written, get it delivered the same week, and keep proof of the send date. I need help at home.

§ 4600(e) and (g). Mileage and interpreter provisions confirmed as described.

The pattern worth noting: all four passed, and two still improved. A provision can be stated accurately and still leave the reader without the thing they could actually do about it.

August 19, 2026 — MTUS guideline changes: we undercounted, and missed a category entirely

What was wrong: /resources/2026-law-changes/ said two MTUS treatment guidelines were replaced on January 2, 2026 — Shoulder Disorders and Hand, Wrist and Forearm Disorders.

What is correct: four were replaced, each filed December 18, 2025 (Register 2025, No. 51), operative January 2, 2026 — Shoulder Disorders (8 CCR § 9792.23.2), Elbow Disorders (§ 9792.23.3), Hand, Wrist and Forearm Disorders (§ 9792.23.4), and Traumatic Brain Injury (§ 9792.24.5, which sits under Special Topics rather than with the orthopedic guidelines — anyone searching the 9792.23 series will not find it).

And we had missed the year's most consequential MTUS change entirely. On April 1, 2026, 8 CCR § 9792.23.8, the Workplace Mental Health Guideline, was amended to incorporate a new Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Acute Stress Disorder module (ACOEM October 1, 2025), alongside the existing Depressive Disorders and Anxiety Disorders modules.

Why that omission mattered. Psychiatric claims are the hardest category in this system to get treatment authorized in, and a guideline is what a utilization reviewer measures a request against. This is directly relevant to § 3208.3 claims, to public safety members relying on the PTSD presumption, and to assault injuries where § 4660.1(c)(2) makes the psychiatric component ratable. A page that tracks 2026 changes and omitted it was not doing its job.

Also added: the MTUS Drug List update effective April 30, 2026, and the guidelines effective June 1 and August 1, 2026.

Why it happened: the original page was written from the two guideline changes that were most relevant to the injury pages already drafted, and was never checked back against the DWC's full MTUS listing. Relevance to what we had already written is not a research method.

How it was caught: re-verifying an unrelated claim against the DWC's MTUS page and reading the whole listing rather than the line we came for.

August 19, 2026 — utilization review and mileage verified against primary sources

Utilization review — the April 1, 2026 restructure, confirmed from the regulation text itself. 8 CCR § 9792.9.1 carries "Amendment of section heading, section and Note filed 12-30-2025; operative 4-1-2026 (Register 2026, No. 1)"; § 9792.9.8 carries "New section filed 12-30-2025; operative 4-1-2026." The Office of Administrative Law approved the package on December 30, 2025.

Our citation to § 9792.9.8(b)(3) checks out verbatim. The regulation reads: "The extension of time as set forth in section 9792.9.6 is not applicable to a request for authorization of a drug covered under this subdivision." That is the hard, non-extendable five-day formulary clock, cited to the subdivision.

Medical mileage — both 2026 rates confirmed against DWC Newslines: 72.5¢ effective January 1, 2026 (up 2.5¢ from 70¢) and 76¢ effective July 1, 2026 (up 3.5¢). And DWC states expressly that the rate applies to travel occurring on or after the effective date, regardless of when the injury occurred — which is why every calculator on this site asks for a date of travel rather than a year. A year dropdown cannot express a mid-year change and is wrong for half of 2026.

No corrections required on either.

August 19, 2026 — SIBTF gap opened and closed the same day

Earlier today we flagged two claims on /workers-compensation/sibtf/ as stated with full confidence but unverified against the enacted text: that the SIBTF thresholds are measured on raw whole person impairment with no 1.4 factor, and that multiple prior disabilities are now combined rather than added under Todd.

Both have now been checked against the enacted text of SB 171. Both are correct as stated.

The statute defines whole person impairment percentage as the rating "without adjustment for diminished future earning capacity, occupation or age of the employee, or any other factor, and without multiplication by the 1.4 adjustment factor referred to in subdivision (b) of Section 4660.1." And it provides that ratings for multiple body parts "shall not be added, but shall be combined with the subsequent compensable injury."

The eligibility structure is confirmed too: a 70% combined floor plus one of two gateways — the 5% opposite-member route or the 35% subsequent-injury-alone route — with both the floor and a gateway required.

One thing we got wrong in our own flag. When we opened this gap we described the page as covering only the 35% and 70% thresholds. It already covered the 5% opposite-member gateway — and called it "the one nobody uses." Checking the page rather than our summary of it caught that. A verification note that misdescribes the page it is attached to is its own small defect.

Still to confirm: the exact subdivision lettering for the two gateways. Substance verified; citation formatting is not.

August 19, 2026 — the original flag, kept for the record

Checked: the claims on /workers-compensation/sibtf/ about SB 171's July 2026 rewrite of the Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund.

Confirmed: the July 2026 enactment · the requirement that a pre-existing disability have been labor disabling at the time of the subsequent injury · the exclusion where medication or a device allowed the worker to work without incapacity · the new statute of limitations (five years from the subsequent injury, or six months from resolution of permanent disability, whichever is later) · and the June 1, 2026 procedural snapshot governing pending claims.

Not confirmed, and now flagged on the page itself: two specific mechanics — that the 35% and 70% thresholds are measured on raw whole person impairment without the 1.4 factor or the occupation and age adjustments, and that multiple prior disabilities must now be combined rather than added under Todd v. SIBTF (2020 en banc).

Both are corroborated in direction by practitioner commentary. Neither has been checked against the enacted statutory text, which we were unable to reach. One source describes the Todd change as something the reform "aims to" do — softer than the page states it.

We opened this gap on ourselves. The page reads with complete confidence on two mechanics we have not verified to our own standard, and on the page where being wrong would cost a reader the most. It now carries a verification-status block saying exactly that, and an attorney must confirm both against the enacted text before it publishes.

This is what the standard is for. It is easy to apply to someone else's page.

August 19, 2026 — all thirteen WCAB office addresses verified

Checked: every street address, suite, city, ZIP and phone number on the thirteen Southern California WCAB district office pages, against the Division of Workers' Compensation's own office directory.

Result: all thirteen matched. No corrections required.

We are logging a pass, because this site tells readers its office pages are re-verified quarterly, and a promise nobody ever reports on is not a promise. A wrong courthouse address on a page someone relies on to appear at a hearing is the worst error this site could make.

One thing did change. The Anaheim page had carried a hedge saying the state's own materials gave both "N. Link" and "North Pacificenter Drive." The DWC directory now lists 1065 N. Link, Suite 170, so the hedge is replaced with the verified address and a note that third-party directories still showing Pacificenter Drive or Suite 160 are stale. The warning that the campus is genuinely confusing stays — that one is still true.

Next scheduled check: November 2026.

August 19, 2026 — two open findings verified; one of them did not hold

Both items previously flagged on this site as "needs independent verification before launch" were checked against primary sources on this date. Item 2 held. Item 1 did not, and we found that out four days later — the entry stays here, with what we got wrong marked on it, because a verification log that quietly deletes its bad calls is not a verification log.

1 — Labor Code § 5909. [SUPERSEDED — see the August 23, 2026 entry below.] What we confirmed on this date was the sunset: that the AB 171 transmittal trigger (Stats. 2024, ch. 52, § 27) carried its own repeal date of July 1, 2026, and that the filing-trigger text was scheduled to return that day. All of that was true when it was written into AB 171. What we did not do was check whether the Legislature had touched § 5909 since — and it had, five weeks before we looked.

What we changed on this date: several pages had said only that the section "reverted," without saying what reverted, so those pages, both deadline calculators and the Spanish versions were made specific. That was the right instinct applied to the wrong fact. Making a wrong statement more precise makes it more wrong, and it did.

2 — Labor Code § 4658 permanent disability weeks above 50%. The seven bands were confirmed verbatim against the § 4658(d)(1) statutory text, and every total was reproduced by two independent methods. 50% = 271.25 weeks · 70% = 433.25 · 75% = 513.25 · 99.75% = 909.25.

And a trap worth publishing: subdivision (a) of § 4658 contains its own worked illustration showing 15% = 50.25 weeks. Our figure is 50.50. Both are right — the (a) illustration belongs to the schedule for injuries prior to January 1, 1992, while (d)(1) and (e) govern injuries from 2005 and 2013 onward. Anyone auditing this site who compares our figures to the (a) table will think they have found an error. They have not.

August 23, 2026 — Labor Code § 5909 was stated backwards across the English site

What was wrong: every English page that described the reconsideration clock said Labor Code § 5909's 60 days runs "from the date of filing," that the AB 171 transmittal trigger "reverted" on July 1, 2026, and — on several pages — that most other California publishers had missed the reversion. The rule is the opposite of what we published, and this is a jurisdictional deadline: it decides whether a petition was denied by operation of law before anyone acted on it.

What is correct: SB 171 (Stats. 2026, ch. 83), chaptered July 13, 2026, deleted AB 171's sunset and repealed the filing-trigger version outright. The transmittal trigger is the operative and permanent rule. § 5909 now reads:

"(a) A petition for reconsideration is deemed to have been denied by the appeals board unless it is acted upon within 60 days from the date a trial judge transmits a case to the appeals board.

(b)(1) When a trial judge transmits a case to the appeals board, the trial judge shall provide notice to the parties of the case and the appeals board.

(b)(2) For purposes of paragraph (1), service of the accompanying report, pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 5900, shall constitute providing notice."

Why it happened, without excuse: we tracked the sunset and not the statute. AB 171's repeal date went into our calendar in 2024, the calendar fired on July 1, 2026, and we published the reversion it predicted without going back to the chaptered text to confirm the reversion had actually occurred. A sunset date is a prediction about what the Legislature will not do. We treated it as a fact about what the law says. Compounding it, we had already identified SB 171 as the bill that rewrote SIBTF in July 2026 — the same bill, on our own site, on a page we wrote — and did not read the rest of it.

What else was affected: the claim-process banner and its master deadline table, the after-the-decision block on the hearings and trial page, the 2026 law-changes page (its meta description, its summary banner, its § 5909 section and its deadline table), the deadline calculator's explanatory note, two answer-page notes and one source line, the site-integrity and firm "we keep it current" claims, and the how-we-write page, which used the supposed reversion as its worked example of the method. All corrected in English. The Spanish and Korean pages carry the same error and are being corrected separately; until those land, the non-English pages are wrong on this point and that is stated here rather than discovered by a reader.

One thing we are not claiming to have resolved. SB 171 was chaptered twelve days after the July 1 sunset date. Which trigger governed a petition acted on inside that window is a real question, and we state it as a question. Anyone whose petition was pending in early July 2026 should have the specific dates looked at.

How it was caught: a re-read of the chaptered bill text rather than of our own calendar. The gate that failed is now the one being rebuilt — a sunset date on our watch list no longer authorizes publishing the reversion; it schedules a re-read of the section as chaptered.

Format for future entries

What was wrong · What is correct, with the primary source · Why it happened, briefly and without excuse · What else was affected, and whether it was fixed · How it was caught

Known limitations

Some things on this site are arguments rather than settled law, and they are labeled as such.

Almaraz/Guzman is contested. Where the strict AMA rating plainly fails, there is a recognized route to a more accurate one — but it is an argument that has to be built, not an entitlement. More.

Alternative approaches to carpal tunnel and tinnitus ratings are used, contested, and sometimes successful. We say so on those pages rather than presenting them as settled.

The AMA Guides are a copyrighted medical text. We summarize rather than reproduce, and we do not publish table values we cannot corroborate.

Rates and office details change. Every rate figure on this site carries its effective date and its source. Every WCAB office page carries a note to verify against the DWC directory before traveling.