California  |  Workers Comp

Temporary disability [TTD] is paid while you are unable to work because of the injury. If you go to work at any job, the TTD stops because you are employed. It also stops once a physician says your condition has reached a level of maximum improvement and is not likely to get any better [permanent and stationary]. Your employer is allowed to end TTD by offering you a position within your abilities, but here they have said there is no such work [light duty]. Since the duty is on them, it does not matter when they have to send such a letter; I thnk there is no real time limit in any case. The law may have changed in the years since I last practiced WC, but at that time there was a limit of TTD only being payable for the first 240 weeks after the accident [you can goggle that information under Workers' Comp, TTD, duration].

Unlike civil cases, once you have filed a claim and it has been accepted, as it has in your case, the employer is legally obligated to supply the beneifts provided under law and no settlement or action by you is required [except to go to medical examinations]. Once your condition is permanent and stationary, the employer, through its Worker's Comp. insurer or adjusting agency, probably State Compenstaion Insurance Fund, is supposed to start permanent disability advances [payment every two weeks]. Your amount of PD is based upon the table established for the supposed reduction of your ability to compete in the labor market [artifical figures, but no heavy work is a 30% diability, limited to light work is 50%] modifed by your occupation [reduced because are a teacher] and age [increases each year above 39 years old]. That results ils a total percentage of PD which means a certain number of weeks payable at a rate determined by your income [yu should be at the top dollar rate]. You ae also pehaps eligible for vocational rehabilitation programs. You are also entitled to life time treatment to cure or relieve from the effects of the injury; since the will offer you very little money for that benefit, do not settle that right. You can never be sure that your own medical insurance coverage will cover the industrial injury problems.