"This has been going on for three years."

The five reasons

1. Nobody filed a Declaration of Readiness. The most common by a wide margin. A case with no Declaration of Readiness on file is not scheduled for anything and will not be. Nothing happens until someone asks for it to happen.

2. The medical-legal reporting is stuck. Waiting on a panel, an appointment, a report, or a supplemental report. This is the largest single source of delay in the system, and it is moved by chasing it — objecting when a report is overdue, requesting a replacement panel where appropriate.

3. You are not permanent and stationary yet. Sometimes this is legitimate — you are still treating and still improving, and settling early would undervalue the case. A long case is not automatically a badly handled one. Sometimes it is exactly right.

4. Multiple claims or multiple defendants. Cumulative trauma across employers, a specific injury plus a CT, a staffing agency and a client employer, an uninsured employer needing UEBTF joined. Each adds parties and each adds time.

5. Nobody is working it. This happens. A file gets buried, an attorney's caseload grows, a paralegal leaves. You are allowed to ask directly what has been filed and when the next hearing is — and you are allowed to change lawyers. If you want to.

How to find out which one you have

Ask, in writing, these four questions:

• What is the last document filed in my case, and on what date?
• Is there a Declaration of Readiness on file? If not, why not?
• What are we waiting on right now, specifically?
• What is the next date on the calendar?

Vague answers to those four questions are themselves the answer.

You can also look. Cases are in EAMS, and the district office can tell you what is on file.

What actually speeds it up

An expedited hearing where the issue qualifies — treatment or temporary disability. Labor Code § 5502(b) requires these be heard far sooner. How to ask for one.

A Declaration of Readiness, if there genuinely isn't one.

Chasing the medical-legal bottleneck rather than waiting on it.

And where payments have been late, the self-executing 10% under § 4650(d) — which does not require a hearing at all and is owed automatically. Calculate it.