LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – The Kansas City Chiefs have joined the team that ended their season in trying to prevent a former player from pursuing a Workers’ Compensation claim in California.
The Chiefs and Bengals, who faced off in the 2022 AFC Championship, might also have to fight California Attorney General Rob Bonta in court. Bonta is asking to intervene in the case over injuries to Chris Manderino, a California resident who filed his Workers’ Comp claim there.
But the Bengals in their lawsuit argued they are an Ohio corporation and didn’t play a single game in California while Manderino was with the team, which was off-and-on from 2006-08. The Chiefs were added as a plaintiff on April 27 and say Manderino’s four-month stint with them is subject to a forum clause that required Workers’ Comp disputes to be sorted in Jackson County, Mo.
AG Bonta wants to intervene to defend challenged California lawsuit. He wants the complaint dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction or for the court to abstain from deciding the case while the Workers’ Comp claim is sorted.
“Although there is no dispute that the Due Process Clause limits the exercise of personal jurisdiction over defendants under certain circumstances, there is no federal right to preemptively challenge a state court’s (or administrative agency’s) assertion of jurisdiction in an ongoing case, by filing a separate declaratory or injunctive relief challenge in federal court,” Bonta’s office wrote.
His motion to intervene says three conditions for abstention are met – that state proceedings are ongoing, they implicate important state interests and they provide an adequate opportunity to litigate the plaintiff’s federal constitutional claims.
“(T)hose proceedings implicate the paramount state interest in protecting the rights of state employees and their entitled to Workers’ Compensation under state law, an issue that is extensively regulated in California,” Bonta’s office wrote.
“In fact, federal courts routinely abstain from hearing challenges to proceedings before state Workers’ Compensation boards.”
The Bengals’ complaint said there is no affiliation between California and Manderino’s alleged workplace injury.
"Manderino's employment contract with the Bengals contained a choice of law/choice of forum clause agreeing that any workers' compensation claim, dispute, or cause of action arising out of Manderino's employment with the Bengals would be governed exclusively by the laws of the State of Ohio and brought solely and exclusively before the Industrial Commission of Ohio,” it says.