California Legal and Regulatory News

According to An Aug. Sixth editorial written by esteemed journalist Richard Burnett,
it was reported that the real-estate boom and it’s subsequent mass speculation combined with a lot of
 ”creative” financing that was not good solid accounting are pushing many investors as well as homeowners into bankruptcy.
California is one of the worst hit states. Florida is right up there too.
On a wider level, the sheer quantity of personal bankruptcies nationally is actually below the pace of the first six months of 2005, when Americans
 inundated the system with filings in order to avoid the federal law that took effect that October, the pace is roughly back to what it was a decade ago.
B In addition to this, bankruptcy attorneys state that a large number of those nearing insolvency are trapped by huge mortgage debts.
Unfortunately, the victims include vacation-home buyers, condominium investors plus others who attempted to time the real estate market at it’s top. Sadly enouph, they also include
 house buyers who overextended themselves by using ARM loans & small down payments to finance their properties. But as the interest rates have dropped,
 certain borrowers’ monthly payments have gone up by nearly fifty percent, even while the estimated values of their houses have stagnated or even dropped.
This is certainly a major issue around the whole nation, according to the news story. Should you ever need an attorney may I recommend Ehline Law. They have the best Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorneys  available.

I wanted to add a little more detail about the Southern California based law firm Ehline Law…As I mentioned they are personal injury lawyers….
Their website is Accident Attorneys in Los Angeles
There you can find Firm news, look at the client portal and also view the Practice areas.
They represent clients in California and counsel pro hac vice with firms across the United States for torts in Arcadia, Azusa, Claremont, Glendora, Marina del Rey, Playa del Rey, Pomona, Redondo Beach, Santa Ana, Studio City, Manhattan Beach, Marina Del Rey, Monterey Park, Hollywood, Northridge, Playa del Rey, Pacific Palisades, Pasadena, Reseda, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Santa Ana, Sherman Oaks, Torrance, Universal City, Van Nuys, Whittier, Woodland Hills, Long Beach, Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto, Oakland, Orange County, Irvine, Sunset Beach,
 Costa Mesa, Anaheim, Orange, Newport Beach, Garden Grove, Anaheim Hills, Riverside and other areas of Southern California.

According to a recent news story reported in the San Diego Tribune, California’s workers’ compensation reform once again is really hitting the small guy, even including those brave individuals who are entrusted to protect and serve.

The newspaper story focused on the case of California Highway Patrol officer Gary Hoag’s major struggle to obtain physical therapy for his injured left leg, medical care for his other leg as well as psychological counseling. Lawmakers are finally beginning to take note of this gaping disparity, with bills being introduced which expand benefits to employees.

But for the aforementioned Trooper, he is still trying to extend his needed health treatment.
Since a series of changes to the workers’ comp system in 2003 and 2004, the state has severely restriced payments to injured employees, says the news report. Even with the changes, the golden state retains some of the nation’s steepest workers’ comp. insurance premiums while doling out the smallest amount in workers’ comp. benefits to injured employees, ranking even behind various states like Mississippi and Iowa which have radically lower costs of living
than does the big state.

It was also mentioned that about two years ago, the insurers had a fifty percent profit margin on their premiums in California!

If you are in need of legal representation yourself then by all means visit Los Angeles personal injury attorneys

According to reputable and respected journalists George Avalos and Barbara E. Hernandez of the MEDIANEWS network,  a two-year-old bill is about to become due for the San Francisco Bay Area as well as the rest of California in the form of job losses which have been triggered by the rather steep in the housing market, a recent forecast states.
Experience points to a lag time of two years between a peak in home-building activity and a pronounced slowdown, or even job losses, for industries whose fortunes are linked to the housing market, according to researchers with the UCLA Anderson Forecast. The economists studied four cycles involving housing slumps and the after-effects on the job market.
Job losses connected to the housing bust have already begun to come to the fore in some areas like the East Bay. Even more troubling is the fact that the early indicators seem to suggest that the Alameda-Contra Costa region is being hit quite a bit harder than the state of California, broadly speaking.

Over the past year, the East Bay has lost some eighteen hundred or so jobs in the normally robust construction sector. This is a decline of almost three percent.
 In the meantime, San Joaquin County has lost about eight hundred construction jobs, which is a reduction of just under five percent. And in the state as a whole, construction jobs have shrunk by some .7 percent during the year which ended in May.
And yet, the East Bay all by itself has been the hapless recipient of more than a quarter of all the construction positions which have been lost in the Golden State over that same time frame. More specifics at The SI Blog
In particular, 1,200 positions have been lost in the credit intermediation industry, which also includes many high paying positions for both loan officers and mortgage agents.
University analysts have predicted that the slump in house sales may be finally beginning to abate in the state. Prices are staying flat in certain individual markets.”Price appreciation has settled in around zero for the Bay Area,” one analyst recently wrote.
In spring or summer 2005, building permits in California hit a peak and then began to slide, stated Ryan Ratcliff, an respected economist from the University of California.

“Two years later is right now,” Ratcliff stated
 

Time to get blogging:

As reported by leading journalist Bill Cavala, Southern California voters are being asked to decide the fate of a very fragile ecosystem…
In essence they are voting on whether or not to protect the ecology of the San Joaquin Delta.
In fact, this Delta is basically the toll gate through which water has to pass to get to Los Angeles.
 The toll necessary is simply Delta Protection. Allow the circumvention of the toll gate and the North loses the wherewithal to protect the Delta. That’s the politics of the issue,
and it essentially boils down to Northern California verses Sourthern. Yes, North vs. South.
The question is whether or not the South (and by extension Los Angeles & San Diego) can be trusted with the protection of the interests of the North without
any leverage whatsoever. In Northern California that answer was a major ‘no’, states Cavala. A big-time ‘no’ that was
so nearly unanimous as to represent an intensity rarely before, if ever, seen on any such issue in the Golden State.
The Delta is reclaimed swampland of course. It is reclaimed with dikes and also levies that were constructed years ago. Seasonal Tidal patterns may sometimes threaten the levies and, if they go, the Delta becomes
 again a swamp filled with water which is much too salty to use for any kind of farming purposes.
At this time, California diverts water from the Sacramento and also the American Rivers after it has gone through the San Joaquin delta. It is pumped into a reservoir, and only then sent South in the California aqueduct. It is a system which works, and yet it is loaded with many potential and current issues.