The Court has decided only three workers compensation cases since 2013 – two in 2015 and one in 2018.

Two of the Supreme Court’s three workers compensation cases were won by defendants at the Court of Appeal.

The two defendants who had won their cases at the Court of Appeal evenly split at the Supreme Court – one win and one loss.

The one plaintiff who had won below lost at the Supreme Court.

Overall, defendants have won two and lost one between 2014 and 2019.

Of the Court’s three workers compensation cases, one involved workers comp exclusivity, one involved compensability and one involved a procedural question.

Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Chin, Corrigan, Liu and Cuellar cast two votes each for defendants between 2014 and 2019.  Justices Werdegar and Kruger cast one each.

Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Werdegar, Chin, Corrigan, Liu, Kruger and Cuellar all cast one vote against a workers compensation defendant in 2015.

Finally, we combine all the Justice by Justice voting data.  We compare those numbers to the overall percentage of cases won by defendants and determine which Justices were more and less likely to vote for defendants than the Court as a whole.  Seven Justices have voted for defendants in workers compensation cases at a higher rate than defendants’ overall winning percentage: Justice Brown (76.47%), Justices Kruger and Cuellar (66.67% each), Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye (60%), Justice Chin (57.69%), Justice Baxter (56.25%) and Chief Justice George (53.57%).

Eleven Justices have been less likely to vote for defendants in workers comp cases than defendants were to win the case: Chief Justice Lucas and Justices Broussard, Arabian and Moreno (50% each), Justice Kennard (48.48%), Justices Panelli, Werdegar and Corrigan (44.44% each), Justice Liu (40%), Justice Mosk (37.5%) and Justice Eagleson (0%).

Join us back here next Thursday as we turn our attention to another topic.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Don DeBold (no changes).