Latest California Headlines

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

California Lawmakers Grapple with Fatal Oakland Warehouse Fire

Mar 16 2017 // California state lawmakers said they are grappling with a growing public safety problem in cities where financially struggling artists are illegally converting warehouses into housing and entertainment venues. The Senate...

Owner of Hotel Cleaning Firm in California Pleads Guilty to Workers’ Comp Fraud

Mar 15 2017 // Hyok Kwon, owner of Good Neighbor Services, a janitorial company that provided services to some of San Diego’s most exclusive hotels and resorts, has pleaded yesterday to seven felonies, including premium and...

Panel Hands Small Victory to California Utilities in Nuke Plant Suit

Mar 15 2017 // An arbitration panel has awarded California utilities $125 million in a lawsuit claiming that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries supplied faulty steam generators that helped lead to the closure of the San Onofre nuclear...

Hub Names Ryan Employee Benefits Market Leader in Northern California

Mar 14 2017 // Hub California has named John Martin Ryan employee benefits market leader for Northern California. Ryan is responsible for managing and overseeing Northern California employee benefit producers, recruiting employee...

Report: High Volume, Low Costs For Comp Claims in Northernmost California

Mar 13 2017 // California’s northern most counties accounted for 1.1 percent of the state’s workforce but 3.3 percent of the job injury claims, according to a report from the California Workers’ Compensation...

Uber Settlement to Give California Drivers $1 Each Does Not Win Over Judge

Mar 13 2017 // Uber Technologies Inc. failed to persuade a judge to approve a settlement offering 1.6 million California drivers an average of $1.08 each to dispense with alleged labor-code violations that their lawyer earlier claimed...

Uber Settlement with Drivers Ignites Battle Among Rival Lawyers

Mar 10 2017 // Another Uber Technologies Inc. lawsuit settlement is under siege, with warring lawyers for drivers again trying to tear the deal apart. The company wants a Los Angeles judge to bless a proposal to pay 1.6 million...

Keenan & Associates in California Inks Deal to Join AssuredPartners

Mar 9 2017 // Torrance, Calif.-based Keenan & Associates has entered into an agreement to join AssuredPartners Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Keenan’s 700-plus employees will continue operations under the current...

California Fault Could Yield M7.4 Quake, Study Shows

Mar 9 2017 // An earthquake fault running from San Diego Bay to Los Angeles is capable of producing a magnitude-7.4 earthquake that could affect some of the region’s most densely populated areas, according to a new study. The...

California Legislators Consider Self-Driving Vehicles and the Need for Prop 103 Reform

Mar 9 2017 // Proposition 103—California’s restrictive regulatory regime for insurance—may need a few tweaks as fewer and fewer cars on the road have human drivers. During a March 8 informational hearing, members of the...

Stone Creek Adds Nava as Personal Lines Producer in California

Mar 8 2017 // Miguel Nava has been hired at Stone Creek Insurance Agency in their Lafayette, Calif. headquarters as a personal lines producer. Nava will also serve as chair of the language department, advancing Stone Creek’s...

Nation’s First Driverless Shuttles Make Debut at California Business Park

Mar 8 2017 // The first driverless shuttles in the nation to be operating on public roads made a debut at a San Francisco Bay Area business park. The East Bay Times reporte the shuttles get around using lasers on all four corners, GPS...

Leavitt Group Hires Stephens and Terpstra in California

Mar 8 2017 // United Insurance Services has added KJ Stephens and Adam Terpstra to its Granite Bay, Calif. location. Stephens is an employee benefits agent and Terpstra is a commercial agent. Terpstra specializes in member-owned group...

Autonomous Bus Without Back-Up Driver Coming to California Road

Mar 7 2017 // A pair of $250,000 autonomous buses began driving around an empty San Francisco Bay Area parking lot this week in preparation to move onto a local public road in California’s first pilot program for a self-driving...

Humans to Blame for More Than 80% of U.S. Wildfires

Mar 7 2017 // Humans have been the culprits behind hundreds of thousands of wildfires in recent decades, and they will probably make things a whole lot worse in coming years. Research from the University of Colorado Boulder finds that...

NorCal Insurance in California Joins Leavitt Group

Mar 6 2017 // NorCal Insurance in California has merged operations with Leavitt United Insurance Services. Rich Hansen remains with the agency as a commercial agent. In addition to servicing his commercial clients, Hansen will mentor...

California’s Troubled Oroville Dam Gets Power Plant Restart

Mar 6 2017 // Crews began restarting a power plant at the base of Oroville Dam, allowing them to release water from the Northern California lake without having to send it over a badly damaged spillway, officials said. The move is a...

Suit Filed in California Says Kona Co. Dupes Those Seeking Hawaii-Made Beer

Mar 6 2017 // A class-action lawsuit says Kona Brewing Co. leads customers to believe they are buying made-in-Hawaii beer. The lawsuit filed in California is against Craft Brew Alliance, which advertises, markets, distributes and sells...

People

Mar 6 2017 // Bruce Carnegie-Brown will become the chairman of Lloyd’s following a meeting of the Council of Lloyd’s where his appointment as successor to John Nelson was approved unanimously. His appointment also was...

California DIR Suspends 7 Workers’ Comp Medical Providers for Fraud

Mar 6 2017 // California’s Department of Industrial Relations and its Division of Workers’ Compensation has suspended seven medical providers from participating in the state’s workers’ comp system. The providers...