“I am glad and so very pleased...he made happen what no other attorney could do. So far he has proven his weight in gold.”
Jamal Sharples
Antelope Valley
✦ Certified Specialist in Workers’ Compensation Law — Certified by the State Bar of California, Board of Legal Specialization ✦
Serving injured workers across California. Board-certified specialist; no fee unless we win.
By Eman Yazdchi, Esq. · Certified Specialist in Workers' Compensation Law, State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization
In California, an injured Long Beach oil and gas worker — Wilmington / Carson refinery belt (Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, Valero), Tesoro / Andeavor legacy footprint, THUMS Long Beach Unit operations, refinery-turnaround contractor — recovers medical care, wage replacement, and permanent disability. Yazdchi Law, a Certified Specialist in Workers' Compensation Law firm, handles these at the Long Beach WCAB.
Long Beach concentrates one of the densest refinery and downstream-petroleum footprints in California. The anchors are the Marathon Petroleum Los Angeles Refinery on the Carson / Wilmington footprint (formerly Tesoro / Andeavor, one of the largest West Coast refineries); the Phillips 66 Los Angeles Refinery on the Wilmington / Carson footprint (Wilmington plant and Carson plant under a single operating complex); the Valero Wilmington Refinery; the Chevron Long Beach storage and terminal operations; the THUMS Long Beach Unit oil-production operations on the four artificial islands off the Long Beach coast (Grissom, White, Chaffee, Freeman — operated under the THUMS / Tidelands Oil Production agreement with the City of Long Beach); the historic Signal Hill / Long Beach Oil Field tank-battery and pump-jack footprint; and the refinery-turnaround-services contractor base — TIC, Brand Industrial Services, Apache Industrial — that staffs scheduled and unscheduled turnarounds.
The injuries that fill the Long Beach oil-and-gas caseload track those industries directly. Refinery and gas-plant turnaround workers absorb burns from hot-hydrocarbon and steam-system failures, chemical-exposure injuries from process-stream releases, and fall-from-elevation injuries on refinery racks, columns, and structures — all on facilities covered by the Cal/OSHA Process Safety Management standard at Title 8 §5189. THUMS island operations produce drilling and workover-rig injuries plus marine-platform fall and struck-by exposure. Signal Hill / Long Beach Oil Field pump-and-tank battery workers absorb H₂S exposure injuries from sour-crude operations. Cumulative-trauma musculoskeletal injuries recur on long-tenure Long Beach refinery and contractor workers under California Labor Code §3208.1. Many Long Beach oilfield workers are Hispanic and Spanish-speaking, and California Labor Code §3351 extends California workers' compensation coverage regardless of immigration status.
Yazdchi Law's office at 1125 W Avenue M-14 in Palmdale sits roughly 80 miles north of Long Beach via the 14 and the I-405 — no Long Beach satellite. Eman Yazdchi appears at the Long Beach district WCAB on Atlantic Avenue, which hears every Long Beach oil-and-gas case, and is a Certified Specialist in Workers' Compensation Law, certified by the California Board of Legal Specialization, State Bar of California.
A Long Beach oil-and-gas claim runs on the standard framework — California Labor Code §3600 no-fault, California Labor Code §4600 medical, California Labor Code §4653 TD, California Labor Code §4660 PD — but five doctrinal pieces matter especially: the Cal/OSHA Process Safety Management standard at Title 8 §5189 that drives California Labor Code §4553 50% serious-and-willful penalty claims on covered Marathon, Phillips 66, and Valero facilities; the California Labor Code §3208.1 cumulative-trauma rule for long-tenure refinery musculoskeletal injuries; the California Labor Code §2810 labor-contract due-diligence rule reaching Marathon, Phillips 66, and Valero behind under-funded turnaround contractors; the California Labor Code §3700 / California Labor Code §3706 uninsured-employer civil-suit carve-out; and the California Labor Code §3852 / California Labor Code §3856 third-party recovery framework reaching refinery operators and equipment manufacturers on contractor injuries.
Cal/OSHA's Process Safety Management of Acutely Hazardous Materials standard at Title 8 §5189 applies to every Long Beach refinery and process facility handling threshold quantities of highly hazardous chemicals — categorically reaching the Marathon Petroleum LA Refinery, Phillips 66 LA Refinery, and Valero Wilmington Refinery. The PSM program requires written process safety information, process hazard analyses, operating procedures, employee training, contractor program (the operator must select and oversee contractors on a covered process), pre-startup safety review, mechanical integrity program, hot-work permits, management of change, incident investigation, emergency planning and response, and compliance audits. Every Long Beach refinery employer must also maintain a written IIPP under Title 8 §3203 and enforce it. A documented Cal/OSHA Title 8 §5189 citation history is core evidence on a Long Beach §4553 claim.
Under California Labor Code §4553, when a Long Beach refinery employer's serious-and-willful misconduct caused the injury, the worker's award increases 50% across every benefit. The §4553 patterns recurring on Long Beach refinery cases are documented Title 8 §5189 PSM deficiencies on Marathon, Phillips 66, and Valero facilities — inadequate process hazard analysis on aging units, mechanical-integrity failures on relief valves and corroded piping, hot-work permits issued without proper isolation, untrained operators on a covered process; ignored Cal/OSHA citations on the same hazard; H₂S monitoring failures at sour-crude operations; absence of fall-arrest on refinery rack and column work; inadequate lockout-tagout under Title 8 §3314 on turnaround hazardous-energy procedures; and the well-documented historical pattern of refinery incidents that prior Cal/OSHA inspections had flagged. The predicate is the California Labor Code §6400 general-duty obligation.
Under California Labor Code §3208.1, a cumulative-trauma injury develops over months or years of repeated exposure. A Long Beach Marathon LA Refinery operator whose lumbar discs herniate after a decade of valve-and-piping work, a Phillips 66 LA Refinery turnaround contractor whose rotator cuff tears after years of overhead column work, or a Valero Wilmington Refinery instrument tech whose cervical spine fails after years of process-unit work all have compensable California Labor Code §3208.1 claims. Under California Labor Code §5412, the date of injury is when the worker first suffered disability AND knew it was work-related; the California Labor Code §5405 one-year clock runs from that date. Liability under California Labor Code §5500.5 falls on the last year of injurious exposure, often pulling in operator and turnaround-contractor employers.
Under California Labor Code §2810, a person or entity may not enter a labor contract (including refinery turnaround-services contracting where the work is on the operator's covered process) knowing it lacks funds sufficient for the contractor to comply with all wage, workers' compensation, and other labor-law obligations. The statute reaches Marathon, Phillips 66, and Valero that knowingly hired an under-funded turnaround contractor (TIC, Brand Industrial Services, Apache Industrial, or smaller subs). When the contractor carries no workers' compensation insurance in violation of California Labor Code §3700 — a misdemeanor under California Labor Code §3700.5 — the injured worker has both a California Labor Code §3706 civil-action carve-out against the uninsured contractor AND a California Labor Code §2810 due-diligence theory against the upstream refinery operator, plus recovery from the Uninsured Employers Benefits Trust Fund.
Under California Labor Code §3852, a California workers' compensation claim does NOT extinguish a turnaround-contractor employee's right to sue a third-party tortfeasor for the same injury. A TIC, Brand Industrial Services, Apache Industrial, or smaller-sub employee injured at a Marathon LA Refinery, Phillips 66 LA Refinery, or Valero Wilmington Refinery — where the operator's Title 8 §5189 PSM program was inadequate, where a relief valve or piping system failed under mechanical integrity, or where the operator's contractor-program oversight was deficient — has a third-party civil claim against the refinery operator in parallel with the workers' comp claim against the contractor-employer. A THUMS Long Beach Unit contractor injured by a defective drilling or workover system has a claim against the equipment manufacturer or THUMS / Tidelands principal. Under California Labor Code §3856, the court allocates the third-party recovery in fixed priority: costs and fees first, comp lien second, remainder to the worker.
Injured at work? Call (661) 273-1780
Tap to call →Long Beach oil-and-gas cases are heard at the Long Beach district WCAB on Atlantic Avenue. Yazdchi Law appears at Long Beach regularly on refinery and oilfield cases — California Labor Code §4553 serious-and-willful penalty allegations on Cal/OSHA Title 8 §5189 PSM deficiencies at Marathon, Phillips 66, and Valero, Title 8 §3314 lockout-tagout failures, and IIPP failures; California Labor Code §3208.1 cumulative-trauma disputes; California Labor Code §5500.5 cross-employer apportionment across operator and turnaround-contractor employers; California Labor Code §2810 due-diligence claims against upstream refinery operators behind under-funded turnaround contractors; California Labor Code §3852 / California Labor Code §3856 third-party recovery against refinery operators and equipment manufacturers on contractor-employee injuries; and California Labor Code §132a retaliation petitions.
A Long Beach Marathon, Phillips 66, Valero, Chevron Long Beach, THUMS, or turnaround-contractor worker with a confirmed single-level lumbar fusion, defended against apportionment under California Labor Code §4663, resolves in the range of $80,000 to $200,000 in PD indemnity plus future medical under California Labor Code §4600. A catastrophic Long Beach refinery burn, H₂S exposure, or rack-fall produces a substantially higher combined rating; catastrophic injury can reach California Labor Code §4659 life-pension territory. Historical range reaches $5,000,000 (catastrophic spinal cord) and $1,500,000 (cervical) — historical magnitudes, not promised outcomes. A separate California Labor Code §3852 third-party recovery is often available on contractor-employee injuries against the refinery operator.
For a serious work injury at a Long Beach refinery, THUMS island, or Signal Hill oilfield — burn, H₂S exposure, fall from a refinery rack, struck-by — call 911. The closest acute-care EDs and trauma centers are Long Beach Memorial Medical Center (a Level II trauma center), St. Mary Medical Center on Linden Avenue, and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (Level I trauma center) in Torrance — Harbor-UCLA is the primary burn-and-trauma destination for major refinery incidents. Cal/OSHA reporting requires the employer to notify Cal/OSHA within 8 hours of any work-related death, hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye.
Last reviewed by Eman Yazdchi, Esq., May 2026.
Ready to discuss your case? Schedule a free consultation.
Schedule Free ConsultationRead more testimonials →“I am glad and so very pleased...he made happen what no other attorney could do. So far he has proven his weight in gold.”