Posts Tagged ‘AIG’

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Risk carnival, election wrap-up, and tooting our own horn

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

This week’s Cavalcade or Risk is posted by Ironman at Political Calculations. This biweeky roundup of risk posts is a sampling or “carnival” or topic-related posts. Ironman grades the entries for topicality, quality and readability – check it out.
Election results – Washington’s Initiative 1082 to privatize workers’ comp was soundly defeated last night, as about 58% of the voters opted to keep the system that has operated since 1911 in place. Obviously, this is a disappointment to private insurers and independent agents that hoped to open the state.
In Louisiana, it looks like Amendment 9 passed, but news reports we found are still vague. This change would require that claims would have to be re-argued before a panel of at least five appeals court judges before an agency’s decision could be reversed or changed.
In Arizona, Oklahoma and Colorado, voters cast ballots on constitutional amendments that would bar healthcare reform’s mandate that individuals buy insurance. Opt-out measures were passed in Oklahoma and Arizona, but was defeated in Colorado. Missouri had rejected the mandate in August, but not by a a state constitutional amendment.
At Comp Time, Roberto Ceniceros took a pre-election look at what gubernatorial wins might mean in California and New York. He notes that Jerry Brown was very quiet on the issue of workers compensation in California, but in New York, Andrew Cuomo has employee misclassification on his radar screen. As the state’s Attorney General, he recently joined attorneys general from Montana and New Jersey in an intent to sue FedEx.
And as long as we are on politics, it seems like a good time to bring up today’s news that the Treasury expects to earn a profit on AIG investments. Overall, despite the controversy, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout looks as though it is earning a healthy return.
CT Commissioner resigns – somewhat upstaged by yesterday’s election brouhaha was news that Connecticut’s Insurance Commissioner resigned abruptly. National Underwriter reports that Thomas Sullivan resigns amid pressure over healthcare rate hikes. He faced criticism after approving a 47% rate hike by Anthem BC/BS of CT.
Workers Comp Insider again named to top WC blogs
We were gratified and pleased to be named to 2010 roster of the LexisNexis Top 25 Workers Compensation and Workplace Issues:

“Consistently at the top of the heap when it comes to workers’ comp blogs, the Workers’ Comp Insider is a rare combination of breadth and depth. Now in its eighth year, the Insider covers comp issues, risk management, business insurance, and workplace health and safety from Anchorage to Miami. It provides in-depth analysis concerning workplace legislation, occupational medicine, and best practices from Maine to Hawaii. It should be in the “favorites” folder of every comp attorney’s web browser.”

We thank you, our readers, for your continued interest and support. We were happy to see many friends and colleagues on the list as well – we’re honored by the company in which we find ourselves. Be sure to check out some of the other fine blogs on the list. Also, if you haven’t discovered the gem that is the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation Law Community, we urge you to check that out, too.

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Joe Cassano and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain: Take Your Pick

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Joe Cassano is not apologizing to anyone. The former AIG executive who helped bring the world economy tumbling down says he did nothing wrong. His underwriting standards never changed: he never saw any risk in underwriting those collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). And if AIG leadership had had the cojones to keep him on board after the proverbial waste matter hit the fan, he would have cut the tax payers a better deal. He would have stuck it to the financial institutions that AIG was so anxious to insure. You want tough – Joe will show you tough!
Joe has avoided an indictment (he walks), and now he testifies (he talks). In his own not-so-humble opinion, he is blameless in the collapse of the worlds’s largest insurer. When the final story is written about AIG, it will confirm what we have suspected all along: Cassano is not too bright. Tough, yes. Greedy, yes. Arrogant, for sure. A leader of men (and women, only because he has to), not so much. Self-aware and reflective: you gotta be kidding.
In Search of Leadership
When the great men and women of the revolution founded this country, they wanted freedom from tyranny. I imagine they also envisioned generation after generation of principled leaders to further their original goals. It’s highly unlikely that Joe Cassano is what they had in mind.
As we approach the nation’s birthday this weekend, let’s (somewhat arbitrarily) shift our focus to a real leader: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the prodigiously gifted general whose improvisation on Little Round Top turned the tide in the civil war. The Washington Post is running a series on leadership; here is their (video) take on Chamberlain’s actions at Gettysburg.
The Insider extends to all our readers the wish for a fine holiday break. Amid the fireworks and family outings, pause for a moment in gratitude to those who brought us to this moment. In times of great need, great leaders have often emerged. Who knows, perhaps the same will eventually be said of these challenging times.

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Cassano Walks

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Joe Cassano, the man who brought insurance giant AIG – and the world economy – to their knees, has dodged the proverbial bullet: he will not be indicted for his actions in the collapse of AIG’s Financial Products unit, which he ran until his resignation in 2008. Federal prosecutors searched diligently for evidence of wrong doing. What they found, however, was evidence of cluelessness. Joe Cassano was no crook: he was just a manager in way over his head. He apparently believed that underwriting credit default swaps was relatively risk free. Oh, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
If no good deed goes unpunished, incompetence on a cosmic level is not without its rewards: Cassano made about $280 million in eight years of running the FP unit, in addition to receiving a performance bonus of $35 million in his final year with the company. That last payment truly boggles the mind. Cassano was paid for high volume sales of a product that destroyed his company.
Joe Warin and Jim Walden, Cassano’s (presumably high paid) attorneys were delighted with the outcome of the investigation:

Although a two-year, intense investigation is tough for anyone, the results are wholly appropriate in light of our client’s factual innocence. This result was the product of two things: an innocent client and fair prosecutors and agents. The system worked.

It would be more accurate to say that the system was worked. As was evident in a prior blog, Cassano was not a nice guy who happened to make a mistake. He was a thug dressed up in a fancy suit. Perhaps on some level it’s reassuring that his actions were not criminal, that he acted in the expectation that his company would make money. Cassano certainly made an obscene amount of money, but AIG rank and file, the shareholders and the tax payers have to foot the bill for the mistakes of one greedy goon.

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AIG: Equal Opportunity Thievery?

Monday, March 8th, 2010

As the holder of a couple hundred shares of AIG stock (your condolences are accepted), I feel compelled to track the remnants of the former empire, rather like an archeologist who finds fragments of an ancient civilization buried in a forgotten forest. The latest twist involves a lawsuit by two former female staffers in AIG’s Financial Products unit – the unit at the very heart of AIG’s collapse. Susan Potter, 56, and Deonna Taylor, 62, both former VPs, have filed suit alleging that Joe Cassano, the now-fabled head of the operation, favored younger staffers and ran the rogue operation like a “boy’s club.” Now that’s a shock!
Potter and Taylor said that managers misled them about salary caps, paid younger, male employees more for similar work and fired them in retaliation for filing discrimination charges. Cassano’s lawyer is disappointed by the lawsuit, because his client treated staff “fairly.” This will be one fascinating discovery.
Raging Bull Management
Cassano is not actually a defendent in the lawsuit, as his employment ended prior to the firing of both women. But his over-sized personality placed a stamp as clear as a neck tatoo on the entire operation.
To get a flavor for Cassano’s modus operandi, check out the fascinating August 2009 profile by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair. Here is an example [obscenity alert]:

“One day he got me on the phone and was pissed off about a trade that had lost money,” says a Connecticut trader. “He said, ‘When you lose money it’s my fucking money. Say it.’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘Say “Joe, it’s your fucking money!”‘ So I said, ‘It’s your fucking money, Joe.'”

Here’s another example of micro-management, Cassano style:

According to traders, Cassano was one of those people whose insecurities manifested themselves in a need for obedience and total control. “One day he came in and saw that someone had left the weights on the Smith machine, in the gym,” says a source in Connecticut. “He was literally walking around looking for people who looked buff, trying to find the guy who did it. He was screaming, ‘Who left the fucking weight on the fucking Smith machine? Who left the fucking weight on the fucking Smith machine?'” If that rings a bell it may be because you read The Caine Mutiny and recall Captain Queeg scouring the ship to find out who had stolen the strawberries. Even by the standards of Wall Street villains, whose character flaws wind up being exaggerated to fit the crime, Cassano was a cartoon despot.

Joe Cassano famously stated on an investor conference call: “It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 on any of those transactions.”
Ah, the irony of that line: AIG stock was trading around $55 when Cassano spoke. After all the losses and the $182 billion government bailout, the stock is worth…about a buck.
It appears that Cassano believed his own blustery rhetoric. He was no Bernie Madoff. He was Joe Cassano, True Believer:

“When he said that he could not envision losses, that we wouldn’t lose a dime, I am positive that he believed that,” says one of the traders. The problem with Joe Cassano wasn’t that he knew he was wrong. It was that it was too important to him that he be right. More than anything, Joe Cassano wanted to be one of Wall Street’s big shots. He wound up being its perfect customer.

Serving Justice?
All of which leads me back to Susan Potter and Deonna Taylor. Their complaints are likely true, yet I am having some difficulty summoning up sympathy for them. They were part of a pirate crew. They simply wanted an equal share of ill-gotten bounty. Yes, they were forced to walk the plank (terminated) in 2008 (Potter) and 2009 (Taylor). But the entire operation is scheduled for shut down later this year.
The atmosphere in the financial products operation must have been difficult for middle-aged managers, especially women. Taylor and Potter were probably paid less than their male counterparts. But when you look at the actual work of the unit, which brought the world-wide financial system to its knees, it’s difficult to feel sorry for them. Had they turned whistle blowers, had they been fired for calling attention to the house of cards being built by Joe Cassano and his pirate crew, I might feel different about their plight.
We’ll let Jim Walden, Cassano’s attorney, have the last word: Financial Products “had many capable women at all levels, including in senior management, who thrived under Joe’s supervision, including these plaintiffs. That they would now turn around and accuse Joe of tolerating, let alone encouraging, chauvinism is disappointing indeed. Joe Cassano hired, promoted and supported employees based upon a single criteria: merit.”
We can probably reduce Cassano’s philosophy to a single criteria, but it would not be “merit.” “Greed” is more like it, unadulterated, F-bomb greed.

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(Cannon) Fodder for a Friday: The Fate of Foreign Interpreters in Iraq

Friday, December 18th, 2009

How would you like a job that pays $12,000 a year, where 1 percent of the workforce is killed annually and hundreds of others are seriously maimed? I didn’t think so. You would probably take a pass on working for Titan Corporation (now part of L-3) as an interpreter for the U.S. armed forces in Iraq. The L-3 website promises that “as a member of the L-3 Communications team, you will be exposed to the most exciting career adventures situated on the cutting edge of technology.” Alas, it’s not just the technology that is cutting edge. The roadside bombs cut pretty deeply, too.
We read in the Los Angeles Times about the sad fate of translators in Iraq. There are about 8,000 in all. Over the five year period from 2003 to 2008, 360 were killed. Those who were lucky enough to survive were often shipped to Jordan for treatment. The workers comp benefits fell under the Defense Base Act and were administered by AIG, among others. (See our previous blog here.) According to some of the wounded, they were offered a stark choice: accept a proposed settlement (which absolved the insurer of any future costs) or be shipped back to Iraq, where retaliation and death awaited former employees of the U.S.
The Times article describes the life of Malek Hadi, an Iraqi national who lost a leg and several fingers in a roadside bombing. He now struggles to survive in Arlington, Texas. At first, he was unable to collect any benefits:

Internal AIG documents indicate that a claims examiner withheld Hadi’s benefits in an effort to force him to accept the lump sum. Hadi was “clearly entitled” to benefits, a different AIG examiner wrote in a memo dated August 2008. The company had not paid because the previous examiner “was trying to get the claimant to decide whether to settle his claim,” the memo said.

Malik now receives the maximum monthly disability benefit – a whopping $612 per month. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome, but AIG has refused to cover any treatments. Perhaps they are waiting for a second opinion from the company shrink? Meanwhile, Malik will just have to deal with it!
Former insiders at AIG describe how the game is played:

“If you’re missing one piece of documentation, you got denied,” said Colleen Driscoll, who oversaw the handling of interpreters’ insurance claims for L-3. “These guys get murdered coming and going to work, and AIG turns them down because they don’t have a letter from the insurgents.”

Driscoll, a former United Nations refugee official, left L-3 in 2007. She said the cause was a dispute with company executives over treatment of injured interpreters.

She and another former L-3 official, Jennifer Armstrong, said their experience suggested that 10% to 20% of the company’s Iraqi workers who should have received benefits were denied.

AIG stock is currently trading at the equivalent of about $1.40 a share. It would be nice to think that this was the market’s judgment on the way things are being handled in Iraq, but that, of course, has nothing to do with it. The market, not exactly known for its humanitarian concerns, is punishing AIG for financial – not ethical – sins. Indeed, the market might well approve of the way the injured, the maimed and the dead are being squeezed in this mockery of a benefits program. After all, indemnity and medical expenditures are being kept as low as possible and that can only help support AIG’s battered bottom line.

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Cavalcade of Risk, Linkedin, AIG, fraud, Station Nightclub fire, & strip searches

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Nancy Germond is hosting Cavalcade of Risk #93 – check it out. And while you’re at it, check out Nancy’s regular insurance column on AllBusiness.
Mark Wall’s excellent WC forum on LinkedIn – While recently attending the National Workers Compensation & Disability Conference in Chicago, I had the opportunity to meet Mark Walls who is the founder of LinkedIn’s excellent Workers’ Compensation Forum. Mark, who is a genuinely nice person as well as a commensurate professional, has created an impressive network of more than 2,400 members, which includes employers, claims adjusters, insurance carriers, third party administrators (TPAs), brokers, attorneys, risk managers, regulators, EH&S professionals, and vendors that provide service to the workers’ comp industry. The group illustrates some of the best advantages and features of social media: industry networking, active discussion boards, and news feeds to blogs and alternative media sources. Members can pose questions or topics and get feedback from other members. Plus, Mark does a great job of ensuring that posts are on-topic and he is strict about disallowing spam. To join, you need to first be a member of LinkedIn, and then you can register to join the Workers’ Compensation Forum. Hope to see you there!
The soft market and AIG – if you are wondering why the soft workers comp market persists, read Joe Paduda’s post on the implications of AIG’s price cutting – it certainly offers some clues. Of course, AIG’s pricing isn’t the only factor, but when you have an elephant in the room, it certainly can’t be ignored.
Fraud surveillance – Roberto Ceniceros talks about cuts in fraud surveillance in both the public and the private sector. He’s looking for feedback from others who are experiencing a similar trend. We’ve also heard talk about cuts in safety and loss control services offered by insurers as part of work comp policies. Any feedback on these issues? It would seem shortsighted to relax on either of these important services.
RI nightclub fire settlements – Insurance Journal covers a recent report on settlement details in the 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people and injured 200 others. More than 300 survivors and victims’ relatives sued after the fire. You can also follow some of our past coverage related to workers’ comp, or the lack of it, in this sad case: Workers’ Comp and the Station Nightclub; Avoid Comp Premiums and Pay the Price; Station Nightclub: Who Pays?; Stone Walls and Steel Bars for Business Decisions
Strip search not covered by comp – For nearly a decade, fast food chains throughout the nation were plagued by a cruel and bizarre telephonic hoax, the so-called strip search hoax. The “pranksters” who posed as detectives called fast food restaurants and retail chains and somehow convinced store managers to detain hapless employees. The managers were then guided through a series of progressively questionable and invasive actions such as strip searches of the alleged criminal employees, supposedly on behalf of the police. Sounds weird? It certainly was. In recent developments, Louise Ogborn, a McDonald’s employee and the victim in one of these cases, was awarded $6 million in damages for her humiliating ordeal. McDonald’s attorneys appealed the ruling, invoking the exclusive remedy of workers’ compensation. The Kentucky Court of Appeals disagreed, stating that “We do not find manifest injustice in the trial court’s ruling that Ogborn was not acting in the course and scope of her employment while she was held in the manager’s office.”

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The AIG Saga, Revisited: Gang Wars in Three Piece Suits

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

AIG may have lost a bit of its swagger – that’s what happens when your stock tanks and the government has to bail you out to the tune of $150 billion, give or take a few billion. But tough guys don’t dance, they fight back. AIG is suing NCCI and a host of major workers comp carriers (Travelers, The Hartford, Liberty Mutual, etc.) for under-reporting comp premiums and conspiring to harm AIG. That’s right. All those bullies have been picking on AIG.
AIG’s lawsuit is in direct response to an eerily similar suit filed by NCCI against AIG, accusing the staggering behemoth of under-reporting its share of premiums in nationwide assigned risk pools. This suit, filed in U. S. District Court, was dismissed by Judge Robert Gettlemen, who found that NCCI lacked legal standing to file it. The fallen banner has been quickly retrieved by Liberty Mutual, among others, who intend to refile the complaint. After all, it is AIG’s direct competitors who would have been harmed if, indeed, AIG under-reported premiums.
Badda Bing, Badda Boom
Which leads us to the not-so-lovely, two-can-tango result of AIG counter-suing, alleging a conspiracy to shift costs to AIG. “AIG’s complaint asserts that a number of its competitors under-reported their workers compensation premiums over many years and formed an illegal conspiracy to conceal that fact and to harm AIG,” said company spokesman Mark Herr.
It’s a shame that this colorful gang war has to play out in sedate courtrooms, with immaculately dressed lawyers mouthing lines better suited for Brando, Pacino and Cagney. After all, these are suits filed under anti-racketeering laws. It’s doubtful that the original crafters of the RICO legislation had insurance giants in mind when they fashioned this weapon to attack organized crime.
AIG stock is trading near $46, which sounds pretty good when compared to the under-a-dollar price of just a few weeks back. But appearances can be deceptive. To avoid the humiliation of trading as a penny stock, AIG did a reverse 20 for 1, carving each share into 20 pieces. For long-term shareholders, that $46 is really just two bucks and change. (Go ahead, shareholders, celebrate with a bottle of two buck chuck!)
“You gotta problem with that?” No, sir, no problem at all. I’m just walking down the street with my hands in my pockets, minding my own business. I’m not looking for trouble. What you folks do with all those premium dollars, all that TARP money, all those securitized loans, that’s your business. I wish you the best, I really do. And by the way, that’s a swell suit you’re wearing. A really nice fit. Would you mind my asking how much it cost…?

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News roundup: Health Wonk Review, WC recovery, fatalities, joint & several, AIG and web tools

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Things are sure getting ugly out there in the national debate on health policy. Read what the health policy wonks in the blogosphere have to say about all this – a fresh Health Wonk Review is posted over at David Williams Health Business Blog.
The recovery and WC – Joe Paduda offers an excellent analysis of the likely impact of economic recovery on various segments of the workers comp industry in his post The recovery is coming – what does that mean for work comp? He offers a word of caution for employers: as hiring increases, so too will injuries. “The good folks at the NCCI have looked at the impact of economic recoveries on workers comp, finding “Job creation is related to an increase in the proportion of workers who are inexperienced in their current job and, hence, more likely to sustain a workplace injury.”
Work fatalities down, suicides up – The good news: “A total of 5,071 fatal work injuries were recorded in the U.S. in 2008, down about 10 percent from a total of 5,657 fatal work injuries reported for 2007, according to preliminary government figures.” However, some of the drop is attributed to the economy and a decline in the number of hours worked. Researchers also think that numbers may be lagging since budget constraints at reporting agencies may have delayed classifying cases. One of the most troubling parts of the report is that workplace suicides were up 28 percent to a series high of 251 cases in 2008 – “…the highest number ever reported by the fatality census. Suicides among protective service occupations rose from 14 in 2007 to 25 in 2008.” Read more about the report in Insurance Journal’s story, Fatal Work Injuries Dropped 10% in 2008; Down 20% in Construction.
Joint and Several Liability in action – Roberto Ceniceros blogs about the hefty bills that some New York employers are facing after the demise of self-insured trusts (aka SIGs) in his post Self insuring comp claims has its risks. About 1,789 will be footing about $133 million in unfunded workers comp claims – an average of about $74,000 per employer.
AIG wins one – An NCCI suit alleging that AIG has been shortchanging state workers comp pools for 35 years was dismissed by a federal judge yesterday, but the suit was dismissed on a legal technicality, with no ruling on the actual charges.
Web tools – here are a few good web tools we’ve come across in our travels:
Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need – a guide to some specialty search engines
Wordnik – An ongoing project devoted to discovering all the words and everything about them. We’re liking this, and also recommend our long-term favorite word tool, OneLook.
Meeting ticker – log the number of attendees, enter the average hourly rate, and start your engines. You’ll be surprised to learn how much meetings cost!
ParkWhiz – find and reserve parking before you get there. Enter a date, time & address and get nearby parking garages, rate comparisons, and distance from your destination.
Down for everyone of just me? – enter the address of a website to see if the site is having a widespread problem or if the problem with the page is on your end. It’s surprisingly useful!

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AIG in Iraq: A Cruel Way to Make a Buck

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

AIG has been in the news mostly for its ingenious method of losing money: insuring the riskiest possible financial transactions and tanking after these risks go bad. But give the biggest insurance company in the world some credit. They still know how to make money the old fashioned way: collecting premiums and denying claims. To be sure, this strategy is not easy to do in the states, where public scrutiny is never more than a phone call away. But it works rather effectively in Iraq.
T. Christian Miller from Propublica and Doug Smith from the LA Times have described in great detail how AIG transformed Iraq into a business opportunity with an enormous upside. AIG is the predominant workers comp carrier in the war-torn country, insuring civilian workers. When these workers are injured – and the injuries can be devastating – AIG has routinely denied their claims for basic medical care, artificial limbs and desparately needed counseling for post-traumatic stress syndrome. More than 1,400 civilian workers have died and 31,000 have been wounded or injured in the two war zones.
Insurers have collected more than $1.5 billion in premiums paid by U.S. taxpayers and have earned nearly $600 million in profit, according to congressional investigators. That’s nearly 40 percent profit after expenses – an unheard of loss ratio in the states.
Collect and Deny
The AIG strategy is deceptively simple: first, charge exorbitant fees for premiums, roughly 100 percent of a worker’s pay. (Don’t feel sorry for the companies paying these premiums; they are fully reimbursed by taxpayers.) Then, accept all the small claims and fight almost any claim involving lost time (more than four days of disability). Delay, delay, delay. Never make a payment until ordered to do so by a court.
The denial rate on serious claims is pretty astonishing: about 44 percent. How could you argue that any injury – let alone a serious one – is not work-related, as civilian employees are in Iraq for one purpose, supporting the war effort? In addition, fully half the claims for PTSD are denied. All this in the context of a war where catastrophic injuries are all too common and legitimate PTSD is as prevalent as cuts in a glass factory. How many state-side workers have watched co-workers blown to pieces by roadside bombs? Do you think that such incidents might qualify as PTSD?
AIG used the argument of extremely high-risk working conditions to boost the premiums. Then they turned around and used the strategy of denial to boost profits. Who says capitalism is dead?
I suppose you could argue that this reporting is just piling on poor AIG.The behemoth just cannot catch a PR break. Oh, well, dear reader, don’t waste too much energy feeling sorry for AIG. After all, you are paying for AIG big time: in the bailout that exceeds $200 billion; in the war-based premiums that generate profits nearing 40 percent; and in all likelihood, in the social costs of caring for devastated civilian employees, who have so much difficulty accessing the comp benefits to which they are entitled.
AIG may not know diddly about the risk in risky financial vehicles, but they certainly know how to make money in conventional comp insurance. Of course, it helps that the injured workers are so invisible, like obscure figures in a desert sand storm, struggling blindly to find some kind of shelter in a harsh and unsympathetic world.

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The Yogi Berra HWR, plus AIG, Florida lawyers, scaffolding & more news notes

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Anthony Wright hosts Health Wonk Review at Health Access WeBlog this week, and he serves up some of the wit and wisdom of baseball great Yogi Berra with this week’s best of the health care blogs. It’s a perfect posting for our times when “the future ain’t what it used to be.”
Florida – a bill that would restore a cap on attorney fees passed its first hurdle this week when approved by the Florida House. It must also pass the Senate and be approved by Governor Crist. Attorney fees were considered one of the primary cost drivers in the Florida system and a cap on fees was one of the cornerstones of the 2003 reform, but was overturned in the Supreme Court Murray decision last November. See our prior posts on the topic: Attorney Fees in Florida: What is “Reasonable” and Florida Lawyers Win, Employers Lose.
AIG – In addition to all the other ongoing investigations, state insurance regulators are currently examining whether AIG violated rules governing workers’ compensation sales. “The probe is an offshoot of a 2005 lawsuit from then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who said AIG shortchanged the premiums used in calculating its obligations to state pools. In most states, companies that sell workers’ compensation must fund pools that serve as insurers of last resort to cover injuries at employers that pose unattractive risks.” The 50 state regulators expect to have their investigation completed by June.
Legal matters – In this month’s Legal Clinic at Human Resource Executive, employment law attorney Keisha-Ann G. Gray tackles a few tricky legal questions: the length of time an employer must keep a job open for an employee who suffered a work-related injury, which touches on the anti-retaliation principles that apply across many states; also, a discussion about the relationship between the FMLA and workers’ comp leave.
Scaffolding – Scaffolding (general requirements, construction 29 CFR 1926.451) was the most frequently cited standard in fiscal year 2008 by federal OSHA. It is also the standard for which OSHA proposed the second highest penalties. OSHA has resources to help employers and employees identify scaffolding hazards and solutions to those hazards at scaffolding and the OSHA publications page.
Workplace violence – HUB International Risk Consulting is offering a free Webinar on April 9: To learn more or register: Workplace Violence, What You Don’t Know Could Kill You

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