The Los Angeles County district attorney's office has for nearly a decade operated with a built-in potential for a conflict of interest stemming from its acceptance of private money to pay for public prosecutions of workers' compensation insurance fraud.
When defense lawyers challenged this use of private funds, which was authorized by the state Legislature, prosecutors said not to worry: Their judgments were independent. Appellate courts agreed with prosecutors that there was no actual conflict of interest.
However, a review of prosecutors' performance shows that their decisions--on whom to investigate and on whom to prosecute--have consistently favored those who provide them with money.
The money originates with the state's employers and is handed out by employers and insurers. It is supposed to combat workers' compensation fraud in all its forms--whether committed by employers, insurance companies or workers.
But the district attorney's office has downplayed employer fraud and repeatedly ignored evidence of possible crimes by insurance companies. At the same time, it has cracked down hard--and sometimes unjustly--on the workers whom insurance companies and employers accuse of lying about on-the-job injuries.
A case in point is that of Indravadan Jayaswal.
The district attorney's office had the middle-aged clerk handcuffed at work and taken to jail after he filed a workers' compensation claim for his aching back, arm and neck.
Jayaswal was experiencing classic symptoms, one of his doctors said, of a "clerical workers' sickness" caused by the repetitive stress of spending all workday, every workday, typing on a computer. He was, therefore, his doctor said, entitled to workers' compensation benefits.
But Jayaswal had not at first claimed that his ailments were work-related.
He said he was afraid he would be fired if he claimed to have been injured on the job. So, when pressed, he said he told his doctors initially that he had experienced pain lifting his garage door.
An insurance adjuster seized on the garage door statement as evidence that Jayaswal was lying when he later attributed his injuries to work.
Without asking him to explain, prosecutors charged him with the felony of lying to collect benefits.
Compare that to the way prosecutors handled what they regarded as lies under oath by some of their benefactors.
