NOTE: "Melvin S. Witt, is a recognized expert who has been actively involved in California Workers' Compensation for more than 45 years. He served as Chairman of the WCAB from 1975 through 1980, Chairman of the California State Bar Workers' Compensation Advisory Commission to the California Board of Legal Specialization, and he was a Workers' Compensation judge, WCAB deputy commissioner and secretary, applicants' attorney, insurance defense attorney, WCAB attorney, and adjunct professor of Workers' Compensation law at two law schools. He coauthored and edited California Workers' Compensation Practice (Cal CEB 1973) and founded the Workers' Compensation Reporter in 1973.

Goodbye, Mr. W. No, no, not that W! Not the Dubya who resides in Crawford, Texas and near the Potomac.

The goodbye is to Melvin Witt, the longtime editor and publisher of the California Workers' Compensation Reporter. For many years the CWCR has been the go-to source for monthly updates and commentary on California Workers' Compensation law (note:the CWCR will continue under the able leadership of former Workers' Comp judges Bert Cohen and Charles Swezey, attorney Barry Lesch, and Paul Peyrat. The website is www.cwcrwitt.com.

Witt, a member of the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board years ago, has been a non-partisan observer of comp for years, giving him an unparalleled historical perspective on the system.

In the June 2007 issue, Witt penned a goodbye to subscribers. The farewell is as eloquent an indictment of the current status of California workers' comp as I have seen. Here is what Witt said:

"It is the changes in Workers' Compensation law, however, that have brought me to a final decision to retire, changes that our governor brought about almost single-handedly. His impact on Workers' Compensation was brought forcibly home to me by a recent phone call from an injured worker who told me of his determined efforts to navigate the system but who came up defeated. Following a major injury to his legs, knees and back, he had gone regularly for treatment to an able and concerned doctor and had hired a skilled attorney to advise him. A number of medical procedures that his doctor recommended as necessary to cure or relieve him from the effects of the injury were rejected by the insurance carrier, leaving him, his doctor told him, with far more disability than he would have had with the proper treatment. And, as his attorney informed him, that disability would bring a relatively low rating and monetary return. Devastated by how the system had dealt with him, he was clearly a victim of what could be called "the Schwarzenegger era of Workers' Compensation"."

Witt continued in his farewell address as follows:

"Steeped as I have been in a system that aimed to protect injured workers, I find it difficult to make an adjustment to one that now appears to concern itself first and foremost with lowering employer costs and raising their insurance carriers' profits. Yes, employer premiums were too high and carrier profits too low but for a myriad of causes, not just rising costs of benefits to injured workers. The conduct of the insurance industry itself was a major factor in producing a "crisis" in Workers' Compensation. Employers and carriers then used that crisis to justify a meat-axe approach to reform."

Witt then noted:

"That strategy focuses primarily on lowering premiums, and it is achieved by reducing benefits. Many injured workers may already be looking to welfare and charity to help them and their dependents cope with the effects of greatly reduced temporary and permanent disability benefits and a restrictive approach to medical treatment. Employers and carriers have been given far too much control over medical processes at the expense of timely and adequate treatment for injured workers."

Looking at the history of Workers' Compensation systems, Witt noted that:

"Early in the last century, it was the common law system's unfairness to injured workers that caused them to have to look to welfare and charity. Eventually the common law's corrosive effect brought about the adoption of a Workers' Compensation insurance system that placed ultimate financial responsibility for industrial injuries on consumers of industry's products and services. It was they who enjoyed those products and services and they who should pay for them as a cost of their production. Now, draconian legislative and administrative restrictions have so pared down insurance costs that California's system allows consumers to avoid paying the true costs of producing goods and services. Instead, much of those costs have again been placed on the injured workers themselves as well as on taxpayers in the form of welfare and charity. But are substantial portions of the huge premium savings being passed on to consumers or employers? Many believe they are not, and the figures bear them out."

Looking to the future, Witt said:

"It appears that injured workers cannot look to the legislature or the courts for any real relief. Apparently it will require the election of a governor in 2010 who is not commited to perpetuating the unfairness of the 2004 Schwarzenegger reforms. We have moved from a system of minimal state intrusion, which left dispute resolution to the ability of each side to produce the more persuasive evidence, to a system in which a virtual stranglehold has been imposed on procedures and on what and how medical evidence can be used."

Witt observed that:

"The number of pages comprising Workers' Compensation statutes and DWC and WCAB rules has grown from 278 in 1989 to 756 in 2006, in the Lexis-Nexis publication titled Workers' Compensation Laws of California. Most of the increase has been at the behest of industry that had long fought the imposition of rules and regulations as stifling and misdirected, if not just plain foolish, charges that it had leveled against occupational safety and health regulations. The shift in focus of Workers' Compensation from the well being of injured workers to how much employers can afford to pay in Workers' Compensation premiums has been engineered in a way that enables employers and particularly their carriers to prosper while injured workers must find a way to live on the paltry compensation they receive and too often without needed medical treatment. An impression is left that the Workers' Compensation system has become unfair to the very persons who should receive its greatest protections."

In closing, Witt spoke to the future:

"The pendulum does swing, however, and it can be hoped that political forces will eventually bring a reversal of direction as the inequities accumulate and the excesses of SB 899 become even more obvious than they already are."

Eloquently said, and an inspiring example of the concern that Workers' Comp stakeholders should have for the integrity of a troubled system.