Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer - Bloomberg

Sexual Abuse of Children was 'Endemic' and Covered Up by the Clergy in Ireland

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:59:14 GMT

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Sexual abuse of children in Irish state and church-run institutions for boys was “endemic” and covered up by the clergy, according to a commission’s report.

“The recidivist nature of sexual abuse was known to religious authorities,” the government-appointed Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse said in its report, published in Dublin today. “The risk was seen by the congregations in terms of potential for scandal and bad publicity should the abuse be disclosed. The danger to children was not taken into account.”

The five-volume, 2,500-page Commission Report was published amid angry scenes as victims demonstrated outside a press conference demanding copies. The document is the result of almost 10 years of investigation into beatings and rapes at orphanages, schools and hospitals from the 1930s until the 1990s. The inquiry heard confidential testimony from more than 1,000 people who had been in 216 institutions.

“The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence,” according to the report. Corporal punishment in girls’ schools was “pervasive, severe, arbitrary and unpredictable.”

More than 90 percent of witnesses who gave evidence to the commission’s confidential committee reported being physically abused. Around half of the witnesses reported sexual abuse.

‘Abuse and Neglect’

“These children lived under a regime of physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect,” Meave Lewis, executive director of One in Four, a victims’ lobby group, told reporters. “Even put in the context of the harsh child-rearing practices of the time, it is really shocking.”

The Catholic Church has been grappling in recent years with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy in countries including Ireland and the U.S. Priests have been jailed and defrocked while the church has faced criticism for covering up the allegations by moving pedophile priests from parish to parish.

“We are deeply sorry for the hurt caused,” the Christian Brothers in Ireland said in an e-mailed statement today. “We are ashamed and saddened that many who complained of abuse were not listened to. We acknowledge and regret that our responses to physical and sexual abuse failed to consider the long term psychological effects on children.”

Pope Benedict XVI said he was “outraged” by the sex abuse scandal on a trip to the U.S. last year. “No words of mine can describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” he said.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Ticketmaster Trying to Double Its Profits Through "Monopolistic Scheme"

Paul Kiesel — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:38:44 GMT

Bloomberg News, the Associated Press and other media outlets quickly picked up this news story, even with all of the Economic Stimulus news that's absorbed most websites and newspapers' headlines: Ticketmaster has been illegally conspiring to monopolize the resale market for sports, concert, and show tickets.

According to the complaint filed by Mr. Paul Kiesel, "Ticketmaster profits twice as the result of the monopolistic scheme [and] defendants have illegally bilked event ticket purchasers out of millions of dollars."

The plaintiff named in the lawsuit used an alternate site to purchase tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert -- incidentally owned by Ticketmaster (and a site that gives Ticketmaster 15% of its profits) -- a site that consistently marks ticket prices up hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

Story continues below from Bloomberg News and The Boston Globe:

TORONTO - Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc., the biggest ticketing company in the world, is illegally conspiring to monopolize the resale market for sports, concert, and show tickets, lawyers claimed in a suit filed after singer Bruce Springsteen complained about the company's sales practices.

Ticketmaster was sued for redirecting fans, including those trying to buy Springsteen tickets Feb. 2, to TicketsNow.com where the tickets were marked up by hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Ticketmaster gets a 15 percent cut from TicketsNow, which it owns, Paul Kiesel, lawyer for the plaintiff, said in the complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles federal court.

"Ticketmaster profits twice as the result of the monopolistic scheme," Kiesel, of Kiesel, Boucher & Larson LLP, said in the complaint, which seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction to stop the practice. "Defendants have illegally bilked event ticket purchasers out of millions of dollars."

Fan complaints that they were steered to TicketsNow when they tried to buy Springsteen tickets prompted a New Jersey congressman to call for a federal antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster's sales practices. Attorneys general in that state and in Connecticut are looking into the matter.

Springsteen, in a posting on his website, condemned the sales practice. "We perceive this as a pure conflict of interest," Springsteen said. "The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you."

Ticketmaster, of West Hollywood, Calif., issued an apology Feb. 4 for having steered Springsteen fans to TicketsNow and vowed to refund them the price difference between the face value of tickets and those purchased through the reseller.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Our Health Care Problem

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:11:41 GMT

The New Yorker has a great article this week discussing the many problems the U.S. health care system faces (too many to list in this sentence) and I've posted the first four paragraphs, and a link to the rest of the article below.

It's interesting to note that the article starts with the notion that health care reform, in many industrialized nations, develops after extreme examples of cruelty are made public. And the Bush administration provided many examples (again, too many to list in this parenthetical, but SCHIP being one example, as Bush vetoed the bill passed by the Senate and the House -- except the House didn't have enough votes in favor of the bill to override a veto -- in 2007; UnitedHealth reimbursement fraud, etc.) of why health care reform and the way we look at medical treatment in the 21st century needs to evolve and become more accessible and affordable.

United Health, the biggest U.S. health insurer, announced last week it would settle over $400 million in manipulated payments made to doctors and patients for the past 15 years, which resulted in myriad financial hardships for many who were insured by UnitedHealth. And what UnitedHealth (and several other U.S. health insurers) has been doing needs to be put to an end or companies like UnitedHealth need to be severely punished for manipulating not just health care services and payments, but the trust of the individual that is paying a company monthly to ostensibly take care of the individual or his family when they need the medical attention or treatment most.

From The New Yorker:

Getting There from Here

How should Obama reform health care?

by Atul Gawande

In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. The Canadians had stories like the 1946 Toronto Globe and Mail report of a woman in labor who was refused help by three successive physicians, apparently because of her inability to pay. In Australia, a 1954 letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald sought help for a young woman who had lung disease. She couldn’t afford to refill her oxygen tank, and had been forced to ration her intake “to a point where she is on the borderline of death.” In Britain, George Bernard Shaw was at a London hospital visiting an eminent physician when an assistant came in to report that a sick man had arrived requesting treatment. “Is he worth it?” the physician asked. It was the normality of the question that shocked Shaw and prompted his scathing and influential 1906 play, “The Doctor’s Dilemma.” The British health system, he charged, was “a conspiracy to exploit popular credulity and human suffering.”

In the United States, our stories are like the one that appeared in the Times before Christmas. Starla Darling, pregnant and due for delivery, had just taken maternity leave from her factory job at Archway & Mother’s Cookie Company, in Ashland, Ohio, when she received a letter informing her that the company was going out of business. In three days, the letter said, she and almost three hundred co-workers would be laid off, and would lose their health-insurance coverage. The company was self-insured, so the employees didn’t have the option of paying for the insurance themselves—their insurance plan was being terminated.

“When I heard that I was losing my insurance, I was scared,” Darling told the Times. Her husband had been laid off from his job, too. “I remember that the bill for my son’s delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself.” So she prevailed on her midwife to induce labor while she still had insurance coverage. During labor, Darling began bleeding profusely, and needed a Cesarean section. Mother and baby pulled through. But the insurer denied Darling’s claim for coverage. The couple ended up owing more than seventeen thousand dollars.

The stories become unconscionable in any society that purports to serve the needs of ordinary people, and, at some alchemical point, they combine with opportunity and leadership to produce change. Britain reached this point and enacted universal health-care coverage in 1945, Canada in 1966, Australia in 1974. The United States may finally be there now. In 2007, fifty-seven million Americans had difficulty paying their medical bills, up fourteen million from 2003. On average, they had two thousand dollars in medical debt and had been contacted by a collection agency at least once. Because, in part, of underpayment, half of American hospitals operated at a loss in 2007. Today, large numbers of employers are limiting or dropping insurance coverage in order to stay afloat, or simply going under—even hospitals themselves.

Article continues here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

UnitedHealth to Settle Over $400 Million in Manipulated Payments to Doctors

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:17:36 GMT

From Bloomberg:

By Avram Goldstein and Karen Freifeld

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- UnitedHealth Group Inc., the biggest U.S. health insurer, said it will spend $400 million to settle allegations it has manipulated payments to doctors and patients for the last 15 years.

The company agreed to put $350 million into a class-action restitution fund to pay physicians and policyholders for services provided by out-of-network providers, the company said in a statement today. On Jan. 13, the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based insurer settled allegations from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo by paying $50 million and transferring to a nonprofit group its database that set the amount to be reimbursed when patients used doctors outside their network.

UnitedHealth has been battling the largest physician group, the American Medical Association, over out-of-network costs since 2000. The settlement affects less than 10 percent of health benefits because most policyholders use their health plan’s network providers to minimize out-of-pocket expenses. Still, the AMA said it stopped rampant cheating.

“UnitedHealth Group has recognized the importance of restoring its relationship with patients and physicians by ending use of a rigged database,” said AMA President Nancy Nielsen in an e-mail statement. “We must hold insurers accountable to their obligations.”

Aetna Inc., the third-largest health insurer, separately agreed today to pay $20 million to settle a related case with Cuomo.

Aetna, of Hartford, Connecticut, gained 16 cents to $26.27 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth rose 81 cents to $24.89.

Ingenix Subsidiary

UnitedHealth’s Ingenix subsidiary is hired by hospitals, employers and competing insurers to improve the handling of medical claims, detect fraud and track patients’ prescription drug use.

Ingenix maintains the out-of-network fee database to determine the “usual and customary” fees paid when policyholders go to doctors outside a network of providers who negotiate discounted fees. Hundreds of insurers rely on the database, the company said last year. The database generated less than 1 percent of Ingenix revenue, UnitedHealth said last year.

“With this agreement, the tide is turning against the corrupted reimbursement system that took hundreds of millions of dollars from the pockets of patients nationwide,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Health insurers will no longer be able to distort their data, leaving patients with unfair bills.”

Aetna’s Payment

Aetna’s $20 million payment will be added to the $50 million paid by UnitedHealth to fund the nonprofit database. The money will go to “a qualified nonprofit organization that will establish a new, independent database to help determine fair out- of-network reimbursement rates for consumers,” Aetna said in a statement.

“We recognize the attorney general’s concern about the conflicts,” said Donald Liss, a regional medical director for Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna, at a press conference today.

The UnitedHealth class-action settlement agreement “contains no admission of wrongdoing,” United Health said in today’s statement. The company will pay the $350 million from cash on hand and book the charge for the 2008 fourth quarter.

‘Dent’ in Cash

“They can handle this,” said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst with CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut, in a telephone interview today. “It puts a little bit more of a dent in the $2 billion of cash that the company has, but they are expected to generate $4 billion in cash flow in 2009 even in this depressed environment.”

Cuomo, who subpoenaed at least 15 other companies in the investigation, previously said insurers used Ingenix’s “defective and manipulated” database to set artificially low reimbursement rates.

“We will not stop until the entire industry has been reformed in this regard,” Cuomo said at the press conference. Other insurers are expected to agree to add funds to the nonprofit entity, a person familiar with the probe said Jan. 12.

Cuomo said he plans to get the nonprofit entity running in six months. He said it would develop a Web site where, for the first time, consumers could find out in advance how much they may be reimbursed for common services by out-of-network doctors in their area. A manager hasn’t been selected, Cuomo said.

When patients visit doctors who aren’t in their insurer’s network, the companies typically cover 80 percent of “reasonable and customary” charges.

In one example, Cuomo’s office said that when $200 was a fair-market rate for a 15-minute doctor’s visit for a common illness, Ingenix said it was $77. UnitedHealth would pay $62 when it should have paid $160, leaving the consumer with a $138 bill.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

California, Jerry Brown Goes After Countrywide

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:57:31 GMT

Countrywide Financial Corp. was accused in a lawsuit, filed by California officials, of making risky loans to people who couldn't afford them. One in five mortgages went bad because of these insidious lending practices alleged in the complaint.

In one instance, an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) was approved for an 85-year-old disabled veteran with a poor credit history. The loan was in default within six months.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said of Countrywide in a statement today that, "These shocking new details provide further evidence of Countrywide's dangerous lending practices, which included ignoring borrowers' low credit scores and rewarding employees for selling risky loans," (Bloomberg News, 7/17/08).

The lawsuit accuses Countrywide of paying loan officers commissions for selling loans with higher rates and fees than consumers' credit scores qualified them for, and ignoring scores, debt ratios and minimal down payments that ultimately compromised the mortgages.

Countrywide is one of many lenders that allowed for mortgage fraud to take place throughout the subprime boom -- in fact, that is one of the main reasons for how the subprime bubble was ble to grow so large. Like IndyMac and Bear Stearns, Countrywide wrote their loans in a misleading way; this was done through TILA violations and in many cases the TILA disclosure forms, at least when the loan was an option-ARM or a teaser rate payment loan (paying only part of the interest), did not reveal that the loan was a negative amortizing loan.

Countrywide was just purchased by Bank of America. Bank of America shares have been hit hard since announcing the acquisition of and acquiring Countrywide, falling from almost $50 a share to as low as $20 a share last week. This hit to their stock is likely due to the amount of bad loans that Countrywide wrote throughout the subprime boom (again, 21% of their loans have gone bad, and, unfortunately, many more loans will continue to default).

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

75% of Americans and a Growing Number of Republicans Blame Bush for Failed Economic Policies, Foreclosure Crisis

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:33:01 GMT

There has been a sharp increase in economic pessimism over the last year, and three out of four Americans blame President Bush for ushering in one of the more turbulent economic periods, particularly for the middle-class, over the last thirty years.

Only nine percent of respondents to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released yesterday said the country's economic condition had improved since Bush became president. 75% said conditions had worsened.

However, the number/statistic that stood out the most was amongst Republicans polled. 42% of Republicans said the country was worse off, 26% said it was static, and 22%, less than a quarter of registered Republicans, thought economic conditions had improved.

Clearly, the concerns surrounding the economy are bipartisan. High gas prices, increasing grocery costs, and the housing/foreclosure crisis are issues on top of most Americans' minds. This is also reflected in Bush's most recent approval rating -- just 23% -- compared with 34% in February. The stimulus checks, as many economists expected, have not alleviated any of the aforementioned concerns.

Also, because of recent allegations surrounding politicians who've received preferential or VIP treatment when it came to securing a "preferred interest" on their mortgage, Americans are now less likely to support a housing bailout plan/package, which is very unfortunate (whether a housing aid package is approved or not). This most likely stems from distrust in the officials who are suppose to have the public's interest in mind and not the lenders, like Bear Stearns, who have received government assistance/bailouts ($29 billion in Bear Stearns' case) and misled millions of borrowers into Option ARM loans -- the same lenders, like Countrywide, who in recent days have been in the press as state Attorneys General have been filing complaints against them.

All of these statistics have jumped considerably since the LA Times/Bloomberg poll was taken in February.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

California and Illinois AGs Sue Countrywide Over Mortgage Loans, Borrowers Misled

Paul Kiesel — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:22:27 GMT

California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a complaint today in Los Angeles state court claiming that Countrywide Chief Executive Officer Angelo Mozilo and a unit specializing in loans to consumers with poor credit used deceptive marketing tactics to entice thousands of borrowers into ARM loans without disclosing that their payments would balloon after 30 days. These are the same TILA violations that I've been blogging on for months now, and it is great to see Jerry Brown be one of the first two AGs to file suit against lenders like Countrywide, who were insatiable in their hunger to glut the mortgage market with misleading subprime loans.

According to Bloomberg News, Mr. Brown seeks restitution for borrowers, civil penalties of as much as $2,500 per violation and a court order halting the practices.

The other AG that has filed a lawsuit today is Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, whom I discussed on Monday, in regards to how several states would be taking the appropriate steps to help mitigate the foreclosure crisis and bring lenders like Countrywide to task. Ms. Madigan contends that, "thousands of Illinois homeowners paid a steep price for Countrywide Financial's 'desire to dominate the marketplace'," (New York Times, 6/25/08). Lisa Madigan had subpoenaed Countrywide for documents last fall when the foreclosure crisis was in its early stages.

Ms. Madigan contends, as does Mr. Brown in California, that Countrywide promoted high-risk loans that contributed to the high number of foreclosures in Illinois and that Countrywide was more concerned with profits than keeping residents in their homes.

Both of these states' lawsuits come on news that Bank of America's acquisition of Countrywide has been approved by the latter's shareholders, earlier today.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

FBI: We've Got a Big Mortgage Fraud Problem

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:38:30 GMT

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has ordered more than two dozen of its field offices to stop probing some financial crimes in order to focus on a surge in subprime mortgage fraud, according to the Los Angeles Timesand Bloomberg News.

The shift was made after an analysis of where agents had been deployed. Traditionally, the FBI moves investigators to address urgent needs/cases. As of today, about 150 agents were working on mortgage fraud cases.

Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said that, "If you''re seeing a significant crime problem, you have to move resources [and] we've got a big problem with mortgage fraud."

As mentioned over the last two months, mortgage fraud has been increasing in unsettling numbers. With reports of mortgage fraud continuing to increase, it appears that we're nowhere near an end to the fallout from the housing/foreclosure crisis.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Treasury Secretary Paulson's Hope Now Program is Proving Insufficient

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:57:30 GMT

According to Bloomberg News today, "Newly delinquent mortgage borrowers outnumbered people who caught up on their overdue payments by two to one last month, a sign that nationwide efforts to help homeowners avoid default may be failing.

"In April, 73,880 homeowners with privately insured mortgages fell more than 60 days late on payments, compared with 39,584 who got back on track, a report today from the Washington-based Mortgage Insurance Companies of Americasaid. Mortgage insurers pay lenders when homeowners default and foreclosures fail to cover costs.

"`It's going to take a while before you see the impact of the government's plans, if you can even see a discernable one,' Steve Stelmach, an insurance analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group Inc. in Arlington, Virginia, said in an interview.

"In April, a record 183,000 homeowners were able to work out new borrowing terms with lenders and avoid foreclosure filings, according to the Hope Now Alliance, a mortgage industry coalition formed last year at the urging of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson," (Bloomberg.com, 5/30/08).

For two months I've seen the Hope Now program come up short in all of it's promises and efforts tocorrect the mortgage/foreclosure crisis. Any assistance that it's provided to borrowerswould havelikely been given by the lender itself. Even people within the Fed are realizing the shortcomings ofHope Now, as Sandra Braunstein,the head of consumer and community affairs at the Fed, told the Conference of State Bank Supervisors at a meeting in Florida last week, "The Hope Now program has so far proven insufficient."

For all the critics of a "homeowner bailout," regardless if you support or opposeany of the plans thatare making their way out of the House, Senate and White House, think about how manyother different people are inadvertently affected by this quagmire: Renters, Insurers, Investors, The Credit Worthy, Students (they're finding loans for school more difficult to come by), Auto Industry, etc.

Something needs to happen before this administration exits in January, and I hope they can figure it out nowinstead oflater.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Secretary Paulson is Optimistically Pessimistic

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:07:05 GMT

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson does not predict that the housing market will rebound anytime soon. Instead of trying to come up with new plans to combat the foreclosure crisis, and curb the declining housing market, Paulson feels more secure in correcting current programs that aren't working. However, these programs never worked (or they never lived up to their inflated potential).

Hope Now is one of those programs that have helped such a limited number of homeowners, that the percentage of people seeking help to people that have actually received help is in the 10-20% range. According to Hope Now, millions of calls have been received, but only about 280,000 mortgages were modified. A little over a million borrowers were placed in repayment plans, but those types of plans are not as helpful to troubled borrowers and it can still land the mortgagee in eventual foreclosure. The idea of the Hope Now Alliance (group of mortgage lenders, servicers and counselors) helping at-risk borrowers is intended to help, it's just that it lack the results it claims it can produce. One should look at Hope Now as a program that was established to minimize loss, but particularly so for the lenders and servicers. Also, most of the people helped thus far by Hope Now would have likely been helped otherwise (the 280,000 that have received loan modifications to date), as their credit or situation was better than the people who have been denied or told to try and exhaust other options first.

Secretary Paulson, instead of creating a new program that could help more borrowers (maybe in the seven figure range?), is trying to repair something that is totaled, rather, it's not even salvageable. The original intention of creating Hope Now was to prevent a foreclosure crisis. Well, now we're in one and it appears it will get worse before it gets better. A loan modification program needs to be created that can bring an independent third party into the discussion between borrower and lender/servicer in order for the borrower to be represented fairly. If not, Hope Now will continue to provide mostly stalemate situations, leaving the borrower in an impecunious situation and modifying loans that would have been modified anyway.

Below are remarks made by Paulson today via Bloomberg News:

Paulson praised the Hope Now Alliance of mortgage lenders, servicers and counselors for helping at-risk borrowers, while adding that both the department and the group were working to improve results.

"We will continue to look for additional tools to reach and help homeowners and to make existing programs work more smoothly,'' he said, cautioning that more declines may occur in months ahead. "We know the correction has further to go, and so we should not be surprised at headlines that note rising foreclosures and falling home prices.''

Paulson said the $168 billion economic stimulus plan enacted in February will help result in "a faster pace of economic growth by the end of the year.''

Overall, it continues to look like mortgagees will have to wait until the next administration arrives to help mitigate the foreclosure/subprime mortgage crisis. It would be wise to speak with a lawyer before next January, and see what rights you have based on your housing/financial situation.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel