Costa Mesa and Newport Beach are both in Orange County, but the state Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) lists Costa Mesa’s 92626 and 92627 with its Santa Ana district office at 2 MacArthur Place. Most of Newport Beach, across the city line, is assigned to the Anaheim office instead.
The Law Office of Jesse Melendrez is on the Newport Beach side of that line and represents injured workers only.
The Santa Ana office at a glance
| What | The DWC lists |
|---|---|
| Office | Santa Ana district office |
| Address | 2 MacArthur Place, Suite 600, Santa Ana, CA 92707-7704 |
| Main line | 714-558-4121 |
| Information and Assistance (I&A) unit | 714-942-7576 |
| Court sessions | 8:30 a.m. to noon, and 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. |
| Units in the office | Disability Evaluation Unit; Information and Assistance Unit |
Two neighbors, two offices
In the DWC’s ZIP code locator, as we checked it in October 2026, Costa Mesa’s 92626 and 92627 came back as Santa Ana, while Newport Beach’s 92660 and 92663 came back as Anaheim.
Both offices are in Orange County, so for a worker who lives in one of these cities and works in the other, the county does not change. Which office within the county the case goes to is chosen when the application is filed, and the worker’s written consent to that office is filed with it.
What does the Labor Code say about venue?
Labor Code section 5501.5 names three possible counties for the Application for Adjudication of Claim: residence on the filing date, the place of injury (or of the last injurious exposure, for an injury that built up over time), and, for a represented worker, the county of the lawyer’s principal place of business. When the lawyer’s county is used, the employer has 30 days to object, and after an objection the application is filed under residence or injury.
How we handle Costa Mesa cases
At the start we ask for four things, when they exist: the DWC-1 claim form, every letter from the claims administrator (the insurer’s or employer’s claims handler), the medical reports and recent pay stubs. Pay stubs are on the list because the temporary disability rate is built from average weekly earnings (Labor Code section 4653).
Once the firm takes a case, it files the application, keeps the deadlines, works through the qualified medical evaluator (QME) process and represents the client at each conference and trial.
What the rating unit in the Santa Ana office does
The Santa Ana office houses one of the DWC’s Disability Evaluation Units, which turn medical reports into permanent disability ratings. The DWC describes three kinds: formal ratings requested by a workers’ comp judge, consultative ratings in litigated cases requested by an attorney or an I&A officer, and summary ratings in cases that are not in litigation, requested by the claims administrator or the worker.
Who are Costa Mesa’s largest employers?
Experian Information Solutions, with 3,700 employees, heads the principal-employer list in Costa Mesa’s financial report for the year ended June 30, 2025. The Coast Community College District, Anduril Industries, Orange Coast Community College, the state’s Fairview Developmental Center, Automobile Club Enterprises and four other companies fill out the list of the ten largest.
What we handle
Our benefit pages explain each problem in detail: denied claims, UR and IMR denials (a UR denial comes from the claims administrator’s review, and IMR is the independent review the DWC arranges), temporary disability, permanent disability, QME evaluations, the SJDB voucher and return to work (the SJDB retraining voucher), and medical treatment and MPN doctors (the network of doctors an employer or insurer sets up).
