Arlene C. Lea, Attorney

Arlene C. Lea, partner in the firm, has experience in many aspects of the workers' compensation field. She began her career at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Over the course of 10 years, she worked her way up from claims representative to a workers' compensation supervisor. She participated in mass settlement teams and worked as an account adjuster for businesses like UPS, Starkist Tuna and May Company.

She joined Chubb Group of Insurance Companies as a workers' compensation supervisor while attending law school at night. In addition to working and going to school, she made time to be a teaching assistant at the law school in Legal Research and Appellate Brief Writing courses. She also participated in Moot Court, competing on a statewide level.

Arlene passed the California Bar on the first try in February, 1990. She worked with the Law Offices of James K. McDermott in Ontario, handling workers' compensation and subrogation cases. She also assisted in training and supervising new attorneys and giving seminars for various clients. She handled workers' compensation cases for government entities, such as Cities and School Districts, self-insureds and insurance carriers. She spent a short time representing lien claimants like the V.A., Kaiser and Blue Cross.

Since joining Sacks & Zolonz, LLP, she has become the person to which we refer our subrogation files, in addition to handling workers' compensation matters. She has been active in the workers' compensation forum in the Inland Empire, given seminars to our clients and has opened up our Inland Empire office in Rancho Cucamonga. She has one published case in which an applicant was demanding multiple penalties. The case went up on a Writ of Review. She prevailed, thereby substantially reducing the number of penalties.

Repeating her success in passing Bar examinations on the first try, Arlene is now certified as a Workers' Compensation Specialist. Arlene has a great deal of experience in Municipality, catastrophic and subrogation cases. Because of her past claims experience, she has a real understanding of the importance of knowing which cases can be closed quickly, and when a case has to be litigated. Her philosophy is "A closed file is a good file, at the right price".

In her spare time, Arlene has parented two high school foreign exchange students, became certified in underwater photography (SCUBA) and is known to break into a song whenever there is a karaoke machine available. She lives in Rancho Cucamonga with her husband of 29 years and two very spoiled cats.

• Nocella v. W.C.A.B. 1999