Ford, Deshay

Applicant Deshay D. Ford, in pro per, filed a Petition for Disqualification against the workers' compensation administrative law judge in a case involving a Labor Code section 132a discrimination claim directly against the employer, Institute for Applied Behavior Analysis. The Appeals Board reconstituted a new panel because the original commissioners who issued a November 2, 2021 opinion no longer served on the Board. Reviewing the petition under Labor Code section 5311 and Code of Civil Procedure section 641(f) and (g), the Board found that the petition failed to set forth detailed facts, declared under penalty of perjury, sufficient to establish disqualification grounds such as bias or a fixed prejudgment. The Board denied the Petition for Disqualification. It also noted that a proposed settlement had been reached during the pendency of reconsideration and directed the WCJ to consider it upon return.