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Yesterday, the California Court Of Appeals, First Appellate District, Division Three, issued a decision certified for publication, in the case of Californians Injured At Work member and former Atherton Township Police Department Dispatcher Anita Blick, vacating the conviction that the San Mateo County District Attorney won against her for a violation of Penal Code 550(b)(3), a most ambiguous piece of law at that, in a trial that more resembled a Kangaroo Court and lasted five weeks. She was forced to serve 60 days of a 90 day sentence in solitary confinement in the San Mateo County jail and they still admitted that she was injured!
Above, is a picture of Mrs. Blick when she appeared on the John Rothmann show on KGO Newstalk Radio 810 and told her story of fraud and corruption committed against her by the Town of Atherton, the San Mateo County District Attorneys Office and the Cities Group, the insurer of the Township of Atherton and all municipalities in San Mateo County.
This is just another way that Californians Injured At Work helps their own.
If you go to the main page of this website and click on the big banner to take you to the web site search engine, you will find stories that we have done about Mrs. Blick including radio and television appearances in streaming audio & video.
This is a spectacular victory for injured workers all over California who have been falsely accused of Workers Compensation fraud. This legal ploy can no longer be used against an injured worker in this judicial district! It goes to show you that the law works in mysterious ways and sometimes, just sometimes, the checks and balances of the law work.
The legal issue at hand in the appeal was "Does an act of fraud require specific intent?" Putting it a bit simpler, was the District Attorney required to prove that she was in a culpable state of mind when she is alleged to have committed this offense?
J. Courtney Shevelson Esq., of Carmel, her appeals attorney said that the issue became how could insurance claimants be held criminally liable if they don't know they have a duty to do more than they've done.
"That was the problem with Mrs. Blick. She had reported improvement over the course of years," he said.
"Misrepresentations have to be accompanied by an intent to defraud. In this country we punish people for a criminal act, not for a sin of omission," he stressed.
The court reviewed the statute and concluded: "In short, the person must intend to commit a fraud."
In 1994 Mrs. Blick fell during her normal shift as a dispatcher at the Atherton Township Police Department as she was running to answer the 911 telephone that was not supposed to ring more than 3 times without being answered.
A complaint filed on March 24, 2005, charged Blick as follows:
Count 1 - Making a knowingly false or fraudulent material statement or representation for
the purpose of obtaining compensation, in violation of Insurance Code section 1871.4,
subdivision (a)(1);
The Township of Atherton and the Cities Group were unable to get convictions of the first 2 counts but were able to persuade the judge to find her guilty of the 3rd count.
It should be noted that the Cities Group was found to have violated Mrs. Blick's rights under the law in that they never notified Mrs. Blick that she was eligible for vocational rehabilitation under the California Labor Code, they underpaid her Total Temporary Disability and they illegally terminated her Total Temporary Disability without just cause.
The TTD issues went before the California State Supreme Court and a judgement was handed down in Mrs. Blick's favor approximately a month before the Cities Group made the decision to prosecute her on these spurious charges. Mrs. Blick vocationally rehabilitated herself successfully as a phlebotomist when it was obvious that she could no longer handle her job as a dispatcher at the Police Department.
This is not the first time a Workers Compensation insurer has filed phony charges against an injured worker once they have been caught with their pants down. It seems like it is a very common occurrence around the state. and you thought that the District Attorney was there to protect your rights! Wrong again!
What many people don't know is that District Attorneys around the state are paid to go after injured workers in cases of fraud. The money is dispersed every year by the Department of Insurance's Fraud Assessment Commission, to DA's from all around the state. It seems the more successful prosecutions they get, the more money they get!
You have probably never heard of a District Attorney prosecuting a insurance company for fraud because there is simply no money in it for them to go after the hand that feeds them, even though hundreds of these cases are reported to DA's every year. They seem to hit the round file before anyone's eye ever see them.
If that isn't a big conflict of interests, I don't know what is. And life goes on. And good people are persecuted by these vicious predators. And those whose job it is to protect us simply look the other way and count the money that Steve Poizner's commission hands out to them.
It should be noted that this appeals process and the defense of her against these totally bogus charges cost her over $150,000 plus out of her own pocket and forced her to take out a mortgage on her house. What if she were unable to afford a defense attorney and had relied on a public defender to represent her? Scary thought, isn't it.
So what does winning the appeal give her; simply a new trial. Question is, is the county going to attempt to retry her now that the legal premise of specific intent is forever changed in this particular judicial district and no longer usable.
Are they going to want the issues of perjury committed by representatives of the Cities Group and the Assistant District Attorney to be allowed into evidence at a new trial or are they going to do damage control and try to settle civil damages that I'm sure Mrs. Blick is going to bring against them in the very near future?
A great debt of gratitude goes to applicant's attorney Robert Bledsoe, Esq. of San Jose, CA, a member of the California Applicant's Attorneys Association, who has been representing Mrs. Blick thoughout this whole process since 1994 and still has yet to see one cent from this case. Also to Joseph Courtney Shevelson, Esq. of Carmel, CA, her appeals attorney.
Well, they have a little over a month to appeal the court's vacating of the judgement and we are informed that the decision was unanimous. We shall see won't we.
To read the notice to vacate judgement, CLICK HERE. Check it out. It's great reading even if you're not a lawyer.
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