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California law requires employers to authorize up to $10,000 in medical treatment within one working day while a claim is being investigated (the "30-day presumption" period for treatment authorization).

§4653 sets temporary total disability at two-thirds of the average weekly earnings for the period of the disability, and §4453 puts a statutory floor and ceiling on the weekly figure that goes into that calculation — so it is a wage-replacement rate, never the whole wage that (c) promises. (a) describes permanent disability, which is rated and paid separately once the condition becomes permanent and stationary. (d) drops the indemnity altogether: medical treatment is its own benefit under §4600 and is not measured by the temporary disability rate. Aggregate temporary disability is capped too — §4656(c)(2) allows 104 compensable weeks within five years of the date of injury for most injuries dated on or after January 1, 2008.

Permanent and stationary is a medical conclusion rather than a legal one: the treating physician, an agreed medical evaluator or a qualified medical evaluator reports that the disability from all the conditions for which compensation is claimed has become permanent and stationary — the phrase §4658.7(b)(1) uses to start its own 60-day clock — which is the same idea clinicians call maximum medical improvement. It is the hinge of the claim, not the end of it. Permanent disability is then rated under §4660.1(a), which takes account of the nature of the physical injury or disfigurement, the employee's occupation and the employee's age at the time of injury, and §4650(b)(1) requires the first permanent disability payment within 14 days after the last payment of temporary disability — so money follows a rating, not the declaration itself, which is (d)'s error. (b) confuses the status with permanent total disability, a rating of 100 percent and a rare one. (c) confuses it with work restrictions: a worker can be permanent and stationary and still take modified or alternative work, which is precisely what §4658.7(b) rewards.

§3351(c) makes officers and members of the board of directors of a quasi-public or private corporation employees while they render actual service to the corporation for pay, and then lets such a person elect to be excluded from coverage under §3352(a)(16), (18) or (19). The election is the entire mechanism, and it is the officer's own, made in writing on the form the carrier keeps — which is why none of the facts in (a), (b) or (c) decides anything: headcount, salary level and even sole ownership leave the officer covered until the written election is made. Keep this separate from the licensing side, B&P §7125: a licensee with employees must keep a current Certificate of Workers' Compensation Insurance or Certification of Self-Insurance on file, a licensee with none may file an exemption unless it holds a C-8, C-20, C-22, C-39 or D-49 classification, and from January 1, 2028 (SB 216, as postponed by SB 1455) the only exemption left will be a joint venture under §7029 with no employees. An officer waiving coverage for himself does nothing about that duty.

Employers are required to post the DWC "Notice to Employees" poster in a conspicuous location. Failure to post can result in fines up to $7,000 and expanded employer liability for claims.

The Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit under Labor Code §4658.7 turns on outcome rather than body part: it issues when the injury leaves permanent partial disability and the employer does not offer regular, modified, or alternative work the employee can do. (a) sets a treatment threshold — most injuries needing several visits resolve with no permanent disability and no voucher. (b) and (c) pick catastrophic injuries that certainly qualify, but they state the rule far too narrowly; a shoulder or back injury that ends a roofer's usual work qualifies just as well.

Workers' comp is the exclusive remedy against the employer for work injuries. Employees generally cannot sue their employer in civil court, though exceptions exist for serious and willful employer misconduct.

WC coverage must be in place before the first day any employee begins work. There is no grace period — employing workers without coverage even for one day is a violation.

The point of a return-to-work programme is to put the injured worker back on the payroll doing something the treating physician allows, and the statutes reward it directly. §4658.7(b) makes the supplemental job displacement benefit voucher payable unless the employer offers regular, modified or alternative work — the three terms defined in §4658.1 — no later than 60 days after the report finding the disability permanent and stationary. §4650(b)(2) lets the employer withhold permanent disability payments before an award where it has offered a position paying at least 85 percent of the former wages, and §139.48 funds the Return-to-Work Supplement Program on top of that. (b) confuses long-run experience rating with an immediate premium cut, which no offer of modified work produces. (c) is wrong on the statute's own terms: medical treatment remains the employer's obligation under §4600 whatever work is offered. (d) describes surveillance rather than a benefit.

An unlicensed or uninsured subcontractor's workers can be deemed employees of the hiring contractor, so the general contractor's own workers' compensation policy answers the injury and its loss experience carries the claim — which is why verifying each sub's certificate before mobilisation is not paperwork but risk control. (a) is what everyone assumes, and the point of the statutory employer doctrine is that it does not stop there. (c) misroutes a work injury to group health, which coordinates around workers' compensation rather than replacing it. (d) reaches a party who neither hired nor directed the injured worker.

§3700 requires every employer to secure the payment of compensation and sets no floor at all: there is no minimum headcount and no minimum number of hours, so a single part-time helper is enough. §3351 backs that up by defining an employee as every person in the service of an employer under any appointment or contract of hire or apprenticeship, express or implied, oral or written, whether lawfully or unlawfully employed. That disposes of (b), (c) and (d) together, because hours, headcount and the worker's own preference are all beside the point and an employee cannot waive the employer's duty. On the licensing side, B&P §7125 requires a current Certificate of Workers' Compensation Insurance or Certification of Self-Insurance on file, any no-employee exemption the contractor had filed stops applying the day the helper is hired, and §7125.2 suspends the licence by operation of law from the date coverage was required. (Until January 1, 2028 a licensee with no employees may file that exemption unless it holds a C-8, C-20, C-22, C-39 or D-49 classification; from that date SB 216, as postponed by SB 1455, allows it only to a joint venture under §7029 with no employees.)

Labor Code §3700.5 makes it a misdemeanor for an employer to be unlawfully uninsured for workers' compensation. It is punishable by a fine, imprisonment in county jail, or both.

§3710.1 is the immediate remedy: where an employer has failed to secure the payment of compensation as §3700 requires, the director shall issue and serve a stop order prohibiting the use of employee labour until the employer complies, and it takes effect the moment it is served. The employer may protest in writing within 20 days and the hearing follows within five days, but the work stays stopped meanwhile, and any employee idled by the stoppage must be paid by the employer for the lost time, up to 10 days. The money follows: §3722(a) assesses $1,500 per employee employed when the order is served, §3722(b) assesses the greater of twice the premium that should have been paid or that same $1,500 per employee for the uninsured period, and §3700.5(a) makes the failure a misdemeanour carrying up to a year in county jail and a fine of up to double the premium but not less than $10,000 — rising under §3700.5(b) to triple the premium and not less than $50,000 on a second conviction. (b) belongs to the registrar and follows a disciplinary proceeding, not a site visit, though B&P §7127(a) lets the registrar issue its own stop order. (c) has no statutory basis, and (d) shifts to the owner a debt the statute puts on the employer.

Labor Code §3600 establishes workers' compensation as a no-fault system: an employee injured in the course of employment receives benefits without having to prove the employer was at fault, and even if the employee was partly at fault.

Labor Code §3602 makes workers' compensation the exclusive remedy for an employee against the employer for a work-related injury. In exchange for guaranteed benefits, the employee generally cannot sue the employer in civil court.

§3351(c) makes an officer or member of the board of directors of a private or quasi-public corporation an employee while rendering actual service to the corporation for pay, and §3352(a)(16)(A)(i) is the way out: such an officer may execute a written waiver if he owns at least 10 percent of the issued and outstanding stock of the corporation, or at least 1 percent where a parent, grandparent, sibling, spouse or child owns at least 10 percent and the officer is covered by a health insurance policy or health care service plan. Both halves matter — the ownership stake and the signed waiver — which is why (a) and (d) are wrong in opposite directions: coverage is the default position, and the exclusion never takes effect on its own. (c) invents an earnings test the section does not contain; what the 1 percent route conditions the waiver on is health coverage, not wage level. Two shareholder-officers of a roofing corporation can therefore both opt out, but only on paper and only if their holdings qualify.

§5401(a) gives the employer one working day from receiving notice or knowledge of the injury to provide, personally or by first-class mail, a claim form together with a notice of potential eligibility for benefits — to the injured employee, or to the dependents where the injury was fatal. The duty has a threshold: it arises where the injury results in lost time beyond the work shift in which it happened, or in medical treatment beyond first aid, and the section defines first aid narrowly as one-time treatment plus a follow-up observation visit for minor scratches, cuts, burns or splinters, and it stays first aid even when a physician provides it. (c) inverts that threshold: treatment beyond first aid is one of the things that triggers the form, not a precondition to handing it over. (a) and (b) both start the clock at the injury itself rather than at the employer's notice or knowledge, which is what §5400 and §5402 are about, and then choose a period the statute never uses.

Labor Code §5402 requires the insurer to authorize and pay for medical treatment up to $10,000 while the claim is being investigated, so the injured worker is not left without care during the decision period.

Temporary total disability benefits generally equal two-thirds of the worker's average weekly wages, subject to statutory minimums and maximums. They replace lost income while the worker recovers.

Labor Code §4658.7 provides a supplemental job displacement benefit in the form of a voucher that helps pay for retraining or skill enhancement when an injured worker does not return to work and is not offered suitable alternative employment.

§3550(a) requires every employer subject to the compensation provisions to post, and keep posted, in a conspicuous location frequented by employees where it can be read easily during the workday, a notice naming the employer's current compensation insurance carrier — or stating that the employer is self-insured — and identifying who is responsible for claims adjustment. §3550(d) has the administrative director prescribe the form, requires the notice to tell employees that all injuries should be reported, and requires posting in both English and Spanish where there are Spanish-speaking employees. The teeth are in §3550(b): failing to keep the notice conspicuously posted is a misdemeanour and is prima facie evidence that the employer carries no insurance. (a) and (b) replace a posting the statute wants visible at the worksite with private delivery, and (c) files the policy with an agency that has no role in workers' compensation.

§2750.5 creates a rebuttable presumption affecting the burden of proof that a worker performing services for which a contractor's licence is required — or performing them for a person who is required to hold one — is an employee rather than an independent contractor, and the section ends by making a valid licence a condition of independent contractor status for that work. An unlicensed person therefore cannot be a subcontractor at all, so he and the crew he brought are the hiring contractor's employees, and §3351 makes a person an employee whether lawfully or unlawfully employed. That is why (a) is exactly backwards: the injured worker's rights are the reason the presumption exists. (b) has no basis, because an employee never self-insures. (d) reaches too far — an owner who hires unlicensed workers directly can become their employer, but owning the land does not make the owner the employer in every case.

Under Bus. & Prof. Code §7125, a contractor with employees must keep a valid workers' compensation certificate on file with the CSLB. If coverage lapses and no exemption is on file, the license is automatically suspended.

Commercial general liability (CGL) insurance covers third-party bodily injury and property damage caused by the contractor's operations. Workers' compensation covers the contractor's own employees, not third parties.

Builder's risk insurance (also called course-of-construction insurance) protects the building project and its materials from physical loss such as fire, theft, vandalism, and certain weather events during construction.

Insurance is a two-party contract between the insurer and the insured that transfers risk of loss. A surety bond involves three parties (principal, obligee, surety) and guarantees the principal's performance or obligations; the surety can seek reimbursement from the principal for amounts it pays out.

A certificate of insurance is a document issued by an insurer summarizing the existence, types, and limits of a policyholder's coverage. General contractors routinely require certificates from subcontractors before allowing them on the job.

Additional insured status is derivative: the owner is brought under the contractor's own liability policy for claims arising out of the contractor's work, so when a third party sues over the contractor's operations that insurer defends and indemnifies the owner too, within the policy's limits and terms. Ownership of the policy does not move, which is what (a) supposes. Premium is the named insured's obligation and is never refunded to an additional insured, so (b) is wrong. (c) is the substantive error worth remembering: liability cover answers claims made by others, not damage to the owner's own property, so the owner still needs builder's risk or property insurance. The endorsement is also narrower than being a named insured, because it reaches only liability connected to the named insured's work.

Commercial auto insurance covers liability and damage arising from vehicles used in the contractor's business. Personal auto policies generally exclude vehicles used for business purposes.

Errors and omissions cover, sold also as professional liability, is written precisely for economic loss caused by negligent professional services — a defective design, a bad specification, a missed code requirement — where nobody is hurt and nothing is physically damaged. That gap is the reason it exists. A commercial general liability policy is triggered by bodily injury or property damage, and its standard form excludes liability arising out of the rendering of professional services, so a pure design error falls outside (a). (b) is the wrong risk altogether, covering injury to the contractor's own employees. (d) is not insurance at all: the §7071.6 licence bond is a surety bond answering to the beneficiaries §7071.5 lists, up to $25,000, and it does not stand behind design advice. Design-build is where this matters most, because one firm now carries both the construction and the design exposure.

Mechanics' lien rights belong to those who furnish labor, services, equipment, or materials that improve the property, such as contractors, subcontractors, laborers, suppliers, and equipment lessors. A lender that merely provided financing has no mechanics' lien right.

With no notice recorded, both halves of the scheme land on the same date. §8412 gives the direct contractor until the earlier of 90 days after completion of the work of improvement or 60 days after the owner records a notice of completion or cessation; §8414 gives every other claimant the earlier of 90 days after completion or 30 days after such a notice. Take the notice away and only the 90-day branch is left, for everybody — which is exactly what makes recording a notice worth the owner's trouble. So (a) borrows the 30-day figure that exists only once a notice has been recorded. (b) starts the clock at signature, a date the lien statutes never use. (c) is out by a factor of four, though it sits near a real rule: under §8460(b), where claimant and owner record an extension of credit, the action to enforce can run up to a year after completion of the work. And recording is only the first half of the job — §8460(a) then requires the action to enforce the lien within 90 days of recordation, or the claim of lien expires and is unenforceable.

§8430(a) makes the lien a direct lien for the lesser of two amounts: the reasonable value of the work the claimant provided, and the price agreed with whoever contracted for that work. §8430(c) adds that where the contract was rescinded, abandoned or breached the lien may not exceed reasonable value. So the ceiling is the unpaid value of what was actually furnished, which is what (b) ignores — money already received has to come off the claim. (a) treats interest and fees as if they were principal, and they are not part of the lien amount. (d) confuses the security with the debt: the lien attaches to the property, but its size is measured by the work. The sanction behind all of this is §8422(c) — a claimant who willfully includes labour, services, equipment or materials never furnished for that property forfeits the lien entirely — while §8422(a) forgives an honest error in the demand. The preliminary notice this subcontractor served matters separately: §8410 lets a claimant enforce a lien only if that notice was given and proof of it made.

Recording a Notice of Completion shortens the lien-recording period: the direct contractor then has 60 days and subcontractors/suppliers have 30 days, instead of the 90-day period that applies when no such notice is recorded.

Under Civil Code §8460, a recorded mechanics' lien must be enforced by filing a foreclosure lawsuit within 90 days of recording. Because more than 90 days passed with no lawsuit, the lien has expired and become unenforceable.

A conditional waiver and release becomes effective only when the claimant actually receives the payment. An unconditional waiver releases lien rights immediately and should not be signed until payment has truly cleared.

Under Civil Code §8424, a lien release bond must be 125% of the claimed lien amount. For a $40,000 lien, that is $50,000. The bond substitutes as security so the claimant's recovery shifts from the property to the bond.

Under Civil Code §8800, on a private work the owner must pay the direct contractor any retention within 45 days after completion of the work of improvement, unless there is a good-faith dispute. Wrongful withholding can expose the owner to a penalty plus the amount withheld.

Under Civil Code §8506, a stop payment notice served on a construction lender must be accompanied by a bond of 125% of the claim amount to obligate the lender to withhold funds. The bond protects the lender if the claim is later found invalid.

§8188(a) lets the owner record a notice of cessation once labour on the work of improvement has stopped for a continuous period of at least 30 days that is still continuing on the day of recording, and §8188(c) requires the notice to state the date labour ceased and that the stoppage has continued. What it buys the owner is time: §8412 cuts the direct contractor's window to 60 days after the notice is recorded instead of 90 days after completion, and §8414 cuts every other claimant's window to 30 days. (d) inverts precisely that. (a) goes much too far — the notice starts a clock, it extinguishes nothing, and a claimant who records inside the shortened window has a perfectly good lien. (c) has nothing to do with the lien statutes and is impossible anyway, since B&P §7075.1(a) forbids transferring a licence. The notice matters most on exactly the facts given: on an abandoned job completion may never occur, so without it the 90-day clock never starts to run.

§3706 removes the bargain that makes workers' compensation an exclusive remedy: if the employer fails to secure the payment of compensation, the injured employee or the dependents may bring an action at law against that employer for damages as if the division did not apply. §3708 then stacks the deck, and deliberately — in such an action the injury is presumed to be a direct result of the employer's negligence with the burden on the employer to rebut it, and contributory negligence, assumption of risk and the negligence of a fellow servant are all unavailable as defences, with no contract able to restore them. §3716(a) supplies the parallel route: where the employer does not pay an award, the director pays it from the Uninsured Employers Benefits Trust Fund. That is why (a) and (b) both understate the remedy, and why (d) points at the wrong security — the licence bond has its own beneficiaries under B&P §7071.5 and is not a substitute for workers' compensation.

Labor Code §3715 allows an injured worker of an uninsured employer to file a claim against the Uninsured Employers Benefit Trust Fund administered by the Department of Industrial Relations. The fund pays benefits and then pursues the uninsured employer for reimbursement.

§4604.5(c)(1) is the cap, and it runs per discipline rather than pooled: for injuries occurring on or after January 1, 2004, an employee is entitled to no more than 24 chiropractic, 24 occupational therapy and 24 physical therapy visits per industrial injury. That is what makes (c) the tempting wrong answer — it merges the three into a single allowance the statute never creates — and (a) simply cuts the figure by more than half. (b) ignores the cap altogether. There are two genuine exits, and both matter in practice: under §4604.5(c)(2)(A) the employer may authorise additional physical medicine visits in writing, and paying for or authorising treatment beyond the limit is not a waiver of the limit for future requests; and under §4604.5(c)(3) the cap does not apply to post-surgical physical medicine and rehabilitation provided under the post-surgical treatment utilization schedule the administrative director adopts pursuant to §5307.27. The underlying duty to provide medical treatment is §4600.

§5307.1(a) directs the administrative director, after public hearings, to adopt and periodically revise an official medical fee schedule setting reasonable maximum fees for the treatment, care, services and goods described in §4600, with most of its structure tied to the relevant Medicare and Medi-Cal payment systems. That schedule, not the provider's own price list, caps what the workers' compensation insurer pays, which disposes of (b). (c) borrows the wrong payer: group health rates are a private contract between a plan and a provider and have no bearing on the schedule. (d) mistakes who the parties even are — the injured worker does not negotiate the medical bill, which runs between provider and claims administrator, and a disputed bill goes to independent bill review rather than to the worker. §139.6, cited here by mistake often enough to be worth naming, is the information and assistance program that publishes the guides and pamphlets injured workers receive.

§4650(a) requires the first payment of temporary disability indemnity no later than 14 days after knowledge of the injury and the disability, and on that date all indemnity then due must be paid, unless liability has already been denied. The penalty for missing it is automatic: §4650(d) increases a late payment by 10 percent, payable to the employee without any application, unless wages are being continued under a salary continuation plan. (c) is the practical error worth killing off: the 14 days run from knowledge, not from acceptance, so an employer still investigating must either pay or deny rather than wait. (a) and (d) both start the clock at the date of injury and then stretch it — the statute uses knowledge of the injury and of the resulting disability, which can arrive well after the injury itself. §4650(b)(1) carries the same pattern into permanent disability: the first payment falls due within 14 days after the last payment of temporary disability indemnity.

A builder's risk policy is property insurance on the work in progress, so (a), (b) and (d) are its bread and butter: fire, theft and windstorm are all covered physical losses to the project while it is being built. The standard form excludes the cost of making good faulty workmanship, material or design, which means that when the defective component is the very thing that fails, repairing it is the contractor's cost and not the insurer's. The distinction worth carrying into the exam is that resulting damage to other, sound parts of the project is usually still covered — it is the defective work itself that is carved out — and that this exclusion is a property-insurance rule, not a substitute for the completed-operations cover a general liability policy provides after the job is finished.

A standard homeowner's form insures a finished dwelling and its contents. A house being built or substantially renovated is either excluded outright or capped at a fraction of the dwelling limit, and materials not yet installed are usually covered only under a small building-materials or off-premises sublimit. Closing that gap is exactly what a builder's risk policy is written for: it covers the structure, the fixtures and the materials against physical loss for the construction period and then ends. (a) states the opposite of the exclusion, and it is the belief that leaves an owner uninsured in the middle of a build. (b) invents a dollar trigger; nothing makes builder's risk turn on contract size, though a construction lender will usually require it whatever the size. (c) mixes up the two families of insurance: injuries to third parties and the lawsuits they bring are liability cover, whereas both homeowner's property cover and builder's risk answer physical damage to the property itself.

A named insured is a party to the policy in its own right: it can present a claim, it receives notices and cancellation, it owes the duty to cooperate, and it is on the hook for premium — which is why a subcontractor usually pays for the privilege through the contract price. An additional insured has derivative cover instead, limited to liability arising out of the named insured's work and subject to that policy's terms. None of the other three describes either status. (b) inverts the whole point of being insured. (c) is what an ordinary third-party claimant is, and precisely what a named insured is not. (d) invents a percentage-of-completion cut-off that builder's risk forms do not use; those policies end on occupancy, acceptance, or a stated expiry date, whichever the form specifies.

Civil Code §8484 creates a design professional's lien for licensed architects, registered engineers, and licensed land surveyors who have prepared plans for a work of improvement that is never commenced. It is distinct from a mechanics' lien, which generally requires that improvements actually be made to the property.

§9550(a) requires a direct contractor awarded a public works contract involving an expenditure in excess of $25,000 to give a payment bond before work commences, and §9100(a) names who may claim on it: anyone who provided work authorised by the direct contractor, a subcontractor, the architect, the project manager or another person having charge of part of the contract, plus laborers — which reaches a second-tier supplier. §9100(b) carves out the single party that may not claim, the direct contractor itself. (b) is the reason the bond exists: public property is not subject to a mechanics lien, so there is nothing to record against. (c) borrows the wrong bond — the §7071.6 licence bond answers to the beneficiaries §7071.5 lists, and an unpaid supplier reaches it only through the willful-violation or fraud door. (d) picks a professional liability policy, which covers the architect's own negligence rather than unpaid invoices. The other route §9100(a) opens is a stop payment notice to the public entity.