I am a lawyer that represents claimants and plaintiffs. Prior to that, I worked for a large firm representing insurance companies against claimants and plaintiffs. So what does that mean? If I was a golf pro or managed a shift at a mill, would it change the weight of the assertions and facts presented? It is telling that you’ve punted on the issues and tried to dive down to tap into the “lawyer-hater” vein.

I understand both this system and these issues. I am not a lobbyist - I am a realist.

By the way, thanks for standing up for the Commissioners after the entire point of your prior posts is that they can’t be trusted to give fair awards. You have got to be kidding me with that. Given your mastery of mixed messages, you should go work on the Clinton campaign.

Second of all, this business about increasing the ratings by 80% over what the drs suggest is flat baloney. Insurance companies systematically send claimants to drs who will give low ratings. Claimants attorneys then have to get a legitimate rating from an independent doctor. Commissioners almost always award something in between and certainly not 80% more. Thats just plain wrong.

Who is really to blame for the skyrocketing premiums? Ask your insurance buddies about the phrase “loss cost multiplier”. Its insurance code speak for profit and accounts for 45% of every premium paid, right off the top! You want to talk about outrageous profits at 33% for attorneys? What about 45% for insurance companies who do nothing but deny claims! Attorneys put time and effort into cases, and argue on behalf of legitimate workers comp claimaints who are turned down for benefits every day by insurance carriers who care only about profit (which by the way is in addtion to the 45%). In 2006, profits from this 45% alone exceeded $407 million, even after deducting out special injury fund assessments.
What accounts for that? Increases in number of work injuries? Nope, the number of injuries at least stayed the same if not reduced. Increased medical costs? Sure, I can buy this one, but to the tune of $400 million? Come on. You guys like snooping around at political backwoods stuff. How about taking a look at who has lined Sanford’s campaign pockets? You can bet there are some big contributions from insurance folks.
If it wasnt for workers comp attorneys, legitimately injured folks would go totally without relief. Take a look at what Florida has done in totally abandoning their workers comp system and watch to see how that affects the businesses that decide not to locate plants there because they cant find workers.
If it was really so bad, why would BMW, who has the resources to put a plant anywhere in the country, triple its original investment in South Carolina and inject $750M more dollars into manufacturing based jobs?

Do you realize that claimants are represented by attorneys in only about 20% of the total claims filed in South Carolina? If lawyers highjacked the system, they did a damn poor job of it.

And no, the primary intent of the workers’ compensation system was not to minimize the need for lawyers - it was to cap damages in exchange for not having to prove fault. The alternative is to leave companies open to a civil suit in cases where an injury resulted from a company’s wrong-doing, which could ultimately prove fatal to that business in many instances. We are talking about a legal system - obviously, this necessitates some level of lawyer involvement.

It is profoundly ignorant to claim that lawyer’s fees leave clients in the same position they would have been without representation. For example, in a great number of cases where a lawyer is involved, there would be NO RECOVERY without the attorney. Its called a denied case, and the lawyer must step in to prove that the insurance company improperly denied benefits to a deserving claimant under the law. Do you think someone wholly unfamiliar with the intricacies of the law should do that for themselves? Should they have to do that when the insurance company hires a defense attorney to argue no benefits should be paid?

I suppose if one believes that insurance companies are great big ole benevolent teddy bears that only have claimants’ best interests at heart, then some of what you say makes since. However, because insurance companies endeavor to make money, not lose money, they frequently act first in their own interests, and certainly shade to the minimum when they do agree that there is an actionable claim. Lawyers are necessary because things fequently fail to work perfectly and because people/entities often do not behave the way they should.

Ultimately, this is a tired attack that tries to scapegoat lawyers for a problem they did not cause: higher insurance rates. The number of claims filed in South Carolina and the one’s with attorney involvement has largely been static over the last several years, and there have been no real changes in the total for awards that have been paid. In fact, a court in this state previously struck down suggested increases by the insurance industry because they were baseless. Further, the lost cost multiplier (which insurance companies have cryptically used to justify their suggested increases) was addressed by the legislature as a part of workers’ compensation reform, so that this multiplier must be now be explained. Therefore, why not go to the source and give the insurance industry hell about all of this?

Of course, they will tell you it’s all because of the lawyers.

The bottom line is that personal injury lawyers have hijacked the system. Our state’s workers’ compensation plan was designed to minimize the need for lawyers. A worker injured on the job did not have to prove fault by the employer to recover compensation and the amount of compensation for the worker’s injury was specified by statute. The process was simple and clean and did not require lawyers.

But as is the case in every other area of American life, lawyers got their nose in the tent. (A couple of interesting facts: the U.S. has seventy percent of the world’s lawyers but only five percent of the world’s population and it has thirty times more lawsuits annually than Japan.) Personal injury lawyers using sophisticated marketing techniques – you know, those hucksters on television with numbers like 1-800-SUE-THEM – convinced injured workers that they could help them recover higher compensation awards.

And it worked. Personal injury lawyers in South Carolina have hooked clients and then persuaded workers compensation commissioners to make awards above and beyond those specified by the law – to the point where the average award in South Carolina is 181% of the average awards made in states like North Carolina.

Trouble is, however, the injured worker is no better off. Yes, the personal injury lawyers have persuaded commissioners to increase compensation awards to amounts beyond those set by law, but in most cases those increases are sopped up by the personal injury lawyers’ outrageous attorney fees. (The “33% percent of award” attorney fee cap in South Carolina is the second highest in the nation.)

The fact is the Commissioners are not a pile of liberal, wreckless people throwing money off of a wagon at claimants. For the most part, they are conservative appointees of your governor.

It amazes me that people so readily ascribe “greed” to attorneys that represent plaintiffs and claimants, while most of these same people are motivated by the fact that they think they could make more money if the law was different. I guess that’s not greed - its just business.

Attacking a position or an issue is one thing, but pretending money may motivate one side but not the other is just transparently disingenuous and absurd.

The problem with the Executive Order is that it seems to contradict itself: How can the Commission adhere to the AMA Guides, which is not the law, but “follow the law” as instructed in the Order?

This is the primary question being brought to the courts.

PS - Commissioners are not elected by the legislature. They are appointed by the governor. Sanford appointed 4 of the 7 current Commissioners.