Latest California Headlines

All the headlines from our California Topic Page, ordered by recency.

PG&E Purging Most of Board in Fallout From Bankruptcy, California Wildfires

May 4 2020 // PG&E Corp. will sweep out three quarters of its board of directors to start with a mostly clean slate when it emerges from a bankruptcy case triggered by deadly wildfires ignited in Northern California by the...

$1.4M to Mother of Homeless Man Killed by Police in California

Apr 29 2020 // A San Francisco Bay Area city has agreed to pay $1.4 million to the mother of a homeless man killed by police after they found him in a residential neighborhood with a gun in his hand. The April 23 vote by the Oakland City...

Lippa Insurance Services in California Names Sage Vice President

Apr 29 2020 // Lippa Insurance Services Inc. in Laguna Niguel, Calif., has named Andrew Sage as vice president of accounting. Sage is a third-generation family member to join the firm. He was previously worked with RJS Insurance...

California Earthquake Authority Named Administrator of Wildfire Fund

Apr 29 2020 // The California Catastrophe Response Council, which oversees the Wildfire Fund, has formally named the California Earthquake Authority the fund’s administrator. The Wildfire Fund was established by the California...

The Doctors Co. in California Names Spadacenta Claims Executive

Apr 28 2020 // The Doctors Co., based in Napa, Calif., has named Marco Spadacenta senior vice president of claims. Spadacenta oversees the claims function nationally of the admitted medical professional liability unit, reporting to...

Surplus Lines Pioneer Hall Remembered as Well-Respected Leader

Apr 24 2020 // Michael J. Hall, founder of M.J. Hall & Co. and Golden Bear Insurance Co., was a well-respected leader in the admitted and surplus lines industries. Hall, who was 81, died on Tuesday. He established himself early on as...

California Workers’ Comp Report Shows Written Premium Down 6% in 2019

Apr 23 2020 // Workers’ compensation written premium in California for calendar year 2019 was 6% below that for calendar year 2018, according to an update on California statewide insurer experience valued as of Dec.31, 2019. The...

More States Making Plans to Lift Coronavirus Restrictions

Apr 23 2020 // More states in the U.S. South and Midwest signaled readiness on Wednesday to reopen their economies in hopes the worst of the coronavirus pandemic had passed, but California’s governor held firm to sweeping...

PG&E’s Bankruptcy Plan Heads Toward Approval in California

Apr 22 2020 // California regulators are being advised to approve Pacific Gas & Electric’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy with new controls designed to prevent a recurrence of the utility’s past bad behavior that has...

Families Sue Helicopter Company in California in Kobe Bryant Crash

Apr 22 2020 // Family members of four passengers killed in a helicopter crash with Kobe Bryant and his daughter have joined the NBA star’s widow in filing wrongful death lawsuits against the companies that owned and operated the...

Alera Group Acquires Barkley Risk Management & Insurance in California

Apr 21 2020 // Alera Group has acquired Barkley Risk Management & Insurance in California. The Barkley team will continue serving clients in their existing roles. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Barkley serves clients...

California Workers’ Comp Bureau to Restrict COVID-19 Experience, Payroll in Rating

Apr 21 2020 // The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California has submitted a special regulatory filing to the California Insurance Commissioner with proposals to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The WCIRB governing...

California Details Nursing Homes with COVID-19 Outbreaks

Apr 21 2020 // California has for the first time released details about nursing homes facing coronavirus outbreaks, with three facilities in Los Angeles among the hardest-hit, as the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths across the state...

Travelers, Insured Law Firm Spar Over Civil Authority Business Income Loss Claim

Apr 21 2020 // Travelers Cos. has gone to federal court in California seeking a declaratory judgment that it is not obligated to pay any business income losses of a law firm it has insured under two business owner policies. Its law firm...

States Easing Path to Workers’ Compensation Benefits for Coronavirus Workers

Apr 21 2020 // Sympathetic state lawmakers and regulators in states both red and blue promise to make COVID-19 a major cost driver for workers’ compensation insurers. The governors of Kentucky, Arkansas, North Dakota and Florida...

California State Fund to Accept All Essential Worker COVID Claims; Adds to Safety Fund

Apr 20 2020 // California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund on Monday announced another series of actions designed to support policyholders and workers affected by the COVID-19 crisis, including doubling the size of its newly...

4 Ways COVID-19 Will Change Cannabis and Insurance

Apr 20 2020 // One may not need to be able to read the cannabis leaves to divine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cannabis and insurance. Some good guesses from any insurance professional with their foot in the door of a...

California Supreme Court Ruling Will Enable Montrose to Tap Excess Policies

Apr 20 2020 // A decision earlier this month by the California Supreme Court gave policyholders with long-tail environmental claims a potentially big win, finding that polices within each policy period can be vertically stacked. The...

Insurance Industry Unites Through IICF to Help Vulnerable Children During Unprecedented Pandemic

Apr 17 2020 // A note from Julie Tinney: This iJam blog post was supposed to be very different when we originally planned it. But right now, coming together as an industry seems more important than the marketing-focused content I’d...

California Workers’ Comp to Exclude COVID-19 From Rating, Payroll

Apr 17 2020 // The governing committee of the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California on Friday voted unanimously for a special regulatory filing that includes excluding COVID-19 claims from the experience...