California Insurance Guaranty Association

Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi has authorized an emergency bailout of an industry fund on the brink of running out of the cash needed to pay medical and disability claims for an estimated 40,000 injured California workers. The California Insurance Guarantee Assn., which pays claims on workers' compensation, auto, homeowners and liability policies when private insurers become insolvent, has been slammed by a wave of failures of companies that write workers' compensation policies.

Mattel Inc., the world's largest toy maker, sued a California insurance group for reimbursement of $20 million the company paid to settle a shareholder suit. Mattel claims that the California Insurance Guarantee Assn., which was created to administer claims when an insurer becomes insolvent, refuses to reimburse it more than $500,000. One of Mattel's directors' and officers' policies was with Reliant Insurance Co., which dissolved in late 2001.

Abraham S. Becker, a Rand Corp. economist who advised the CIA on military spending in the former Soviet Union and was known for his thorough understanding of the complexities of the Soviet economy during the Cold War, died of leukemia July 5 in Los Angeles. He was 76. He was best known for his work suggesting that the Soviet Union's hefty military spending would lead to its eventual downfall.

At a time when the state is awash in debt, an emergency fund that covers workers' compensation claims is pushing to borrow $1.5 billion to avoid bankruptcy and keep payments flowing to injured workers. The California Insurance Guarantee Assn. estimated in May that it would need a half-a-billion-dollar bond issue to bail out its workers' compensation fund.