Loyal readers, return with us once again to the wilds of North Dakota, that ice-bound region where executives are criminalized for signing off on cookies and balloons at farewell parties, where out-of-control prosecutors deny defendants their constitutional rights, where a boss not from NoDak is pilloried despite turning around a troubled state agency.
Yes, the Sandy Blunt case has reached a new peak of incomprehensibility. Here’s the latest.
Blunt appealed his conviction to the State Supreme Court a year ago, and the case was argued five months ago. One would think that would be plenty of time for the judges to issue a ruling. After all, the Court issued seven opinions so far this year for cases argued in 2010 – two months after Blunt’s hearing.
And while logical minds would think that speedy justice, a right of all citizens conferred in the US Constitution would apply in the frozen north, apparently that is not the case. (See below for the requirements of other courts in North Dakota)
In fact, of the twelve opinions rendered by the North Dakota Supreme Court, not one was argued before Blunt’s – all were argued a month or more after his, yet the Court has not seen fit to issue a ruling in Blunt’s case.
Which leads to the next fascinating bit of NoDak current events.
Reports indicate the attorney who prosecuted Blunt is under investigation by the State Police for potential crimes including conspiracy. What makes this so interesting is that no other media outlet reported this until well after Steve Cates did in his “Dakota Beacon’.
Wait, it gets weirder.
On the day that the State Police announced the investigation into the Assistant State’s Attorney who prosecuted Blunt (Cynthia Feland), there were two other stories that actually did make the news. One would think that they must be big, if they took precedence over an investigation into potential crimes by a Prosecutor. Perhaps a bust of a huge crystal meth lab? Reports of Al Qaeda coming across the border from Canada?
Nope.
Two men, described in the media as “Native Americans” (gotta love that unbiased media…) were caught on video breaking a liquor store window and stealing fifty bucks worth of booze.
Let’s see…I’m the producer of local TV news, got two minutes to fill on the crime blotter…fifty bucks in booze, about four bottles perhaps, against allegations of criminal actions by a county prosecutor…hmmmm, seems like a pretty clear editorial decision to me – let’s slam the Native Americans! Who cares about a law enforcement official accused of conspiracy and suborning justice!
This would actually be pretty funny, even hilarious, if it wasn’t about a prosecutor who allegedly committed crimes in the course of prosecuting one of the most decent, honest, and competent executives I’ve had the honor of meeting in my 25 plus years in the business world.
(Here’s the relevant language from North Dakota’s Judiciary)
Section 1. Statement of Policy.
a. A goal of the judicial system of North Dakota is prompt disposition of cases.
b. The Supreme Court recognizes the need to provide administrative mechanisms within the unified judicial system to maintain current trial court dockets. These trial court docket currency standards and procedures are established to meet this administrative goal.
c. These standards guide the management of the trial courts of North Dakota. However, these court management standards and procedures are not intended and may not form the basis to change or affect the substantive and procedural rights of the parties in any case. Further, a violation of these standards does not cause the dismissal of any case.
d. Adherence to these standards by trial judges requires lawyers to recognize consequent adjustments in local practice. Members of the bar should anticipate the prompt disposition of cases.

Yesterday’s news that US industrial production continued to improve was a welcome sign of good news for a work comp industry that has been hammered by declining claims frequency, increased severity, horrible investment returns, and a recession that prolonged what was already one of the longer soft markets in memory.
Notably, manufacturing, long a weakening sector, has shown solid strength of late, particularly in New York, where new orders were up substantially over February’s figures. Employment in the sector was also up significantly to its highest point in two years.
As NCCI has reported, injury rates tend to spike up during an economic recovery as the pace of work speeds up, full-time workers get more hours and overtime, and new, less-experienced workers are hired.
What to watch for
The New York Fed typically is among the quickest of the 12 Federal Reserve Districts to report economic data; other Districts will be reporting over the next few days. As New York, along with the rest of the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states were hard hit by winter storms, economic activity may well have been suppressed by factory closings.
The other Districts may well report sharper increases, and if they do that’s good news for the comp business.
What does this mean for you?
Injury rates are going to increase, as is the raw number of injuries. While bad news for the affected parties, this will be positive for occ health clinics, case management and bill review companies, pharmacy benefit managers, TPAs, and other servicing entities.
Insurers will find this a mixed bag, as an increase in injuries means higher claims costs. However, better investment returns, and what appears to be a ‘de-softening’ of the comp insurance market is as welcome as it is overdue.

Medicare Set-Asides are one of those narrow but very deep niches in the workers comp (and other insurance lines) business that look simple at first glance, but are anything but.
The Federal government, more specifically the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requires payers to submit MSAs for claims that meet specific requirements.
There’s been a good deal of confusion about reporting requirements, controversy over how to estimate future drug costs, concern over delays in processing MSAs by CMS vendors, and disputes over the vendors’ judgments. A lot of this is inevitable, as MSAs are a fairly recent phenomena governed by CMS’ myriad and sundry rules. But inevitable or not, the confusion and lack of clarity on deadlines, reporting and funding requirements and submission standards are causing significant problems for all involved.
There are currently two efforts to resolve much of the confusion and concern. WorkCompCentral reports a bill has been submitted to the House that addresses many payer (and CMS) issues. According to Safeway Risk Manager Bill Zachry;
“The bill was developed by the Medicare Advisory Recovery Coalition (MARC) to focus primarily on liability issues, but a number of the provisions will also affect insurance carriers and self-insured employers with respect to conditional payments and reporting of workers’ compensation payments and obligations.
The primary features of the proposed bill include:
1. Providing a specific time frame and process to be used in
determining MSP required payments before settlements
2. A right of appeal for Non-Group Health Plans with respect to MSP
obligations
3. Sensible MSP Recovery Thresholds
4. Taking Social Security Numbers (SSN) and Health Insurance Card
Numbers (HICN) Out of the Reporting Process
5. Setting a Statute of Limitation for MSP claims
6. Establishing safe harbors and clarity with respect to MMSEA §111
reporting penalties
7. Establishing a modest user fee designed to assure that the reforms
in the bill do not raise cost issues in the scoring of the bill.”
There are also indications that CMS is listening to vendor complaints, as it has recently extended the deadline for electronic submission to the end of this year. CMS is also looking for vendors to process the MSA submissions, and is asking interested parties to bid on the contract.
Click here for more details or if you’re looking to support MARC’s efforts,