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In a recent post I highlighted the hunger strike of Tampa pharmacist Raj Bhat RPH. He started his hunger strike on July 5, 2010 to protest what he believes are dangerously high quotas required of pharmacists working for online pharmacy company Medco. According to Bhat the quotas required online pharmacists to fill upwards 45 prescriptions per hour, a pace he says leads to life threatening prescription errors.
As a pharmacy malpractice attorney, I have often criticized large pharmacy chains for high quotas that put profits over patient safety. Quotas increase profits because the more prescriptions that are filled, the more money the company makes. Quotas can compromise patient safety however, because when the pharmacists work at too fast a pace to meet unreasonably high quotas, they make mistakes like filling the prescription with the wrong medicine or the wrong dose of medicine.
Bhat's hunger strike is more than simply criticizing quotas. It is an active attempt to end the practice by drawing attention to it. As of January 17, 2011 he had been on his hunger strike for 28 weeks. On that day his blog was updated with a post indicating he suspended the hunger strike to "drink a glass of orange juice". Apparently, his heath has spiraled downward from going without food for so long. His current status is unknown because that was the last time he posted on his blog and there have been know media stories on him in a long time.
I have deep respect for Bhat's desire to make a difference and his willingness to take a moral stand. However, I can't help but wonder if his hunger strike will accomplish nothing more than him quitting or worse yet dying without change. He does not seem to understand that moral conviction and a willingness to put your life on the line is not enough. While true change can occur through such courageous acts, the act alone is never enough. To prevail, the act must be used as a vehicle to bring relentless, continuing, and unending public media attention to the situation. Bhat has failed to grasp this point. His blog is rarely updated and he does not appear to know how to generate ongoing media attention. Hopefully, he will figure this out before it is too late.
Scott Stroud recently wrote an interesting post about the effects the Gulf Oil Spill may have on tort reform. He discusses the fact that the current cap on damages caused by Oil drillers will not cover the damages caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. He then points out that many of the same politicians that have used the mantra of personal responsibility to pass caps on damages are now claiming that the caps on damages in this case should be removed because BP has to be held personally accountable. Hopefully Mr. Stoud is right about the effect of the gulf oil spill has on the tort reform argument.
My experience as a personal injury attorney in Tampa lead me to conclude long ago that tort reformers have the personal responsibility argument backwards. They claim that caps on damages are necessary because personal injury victims do not want to take responsibility for what happened to them. Of course they don't. They did not cause the harm so why should they pay for it.
The goal of personal injury law is to hold wrongdoers accountable for the damage they have caused. In truth, the goal of Tort reform and caps on damages is exactly the opposite. It is nothing more than an attempt to shelter the one that caused the harm from paying for the true cost of the harm they have caused. It is unfortunate that it took something like the BP oil spill to begin the process of waking the public.
Florida has become a haven for corrupt nursing home operators that use the corporate form to hide their assets from Florida nursing home abuse lawyers attempting to hold them accountable for injury, neglect, abuse and death that occurs in their nursing home facilities. Charles Elmore, a writer for the Palm Beach Post has done an excellent job at exposing one form of the corporate shell game that goes on involving nonprofit corporations. In his article entitled "Post investigation: Nursing home CEO pulls in hefty pay, patients' families frustrated", he details what appears to be the extravagant siphoning of money by top corporate family executives in one Florida nonprofit nursing home chain that has been cited by regulators for substandard nursing home care.
Charles Elmore's article focuses on the Okeechobee Council on Aging Inc. and the Council on Aging of Florida Inc which apparently own nursing homes in Pahokee, Gainesville, and Bradenton Florida. Unfortunately, the type of corporate wrongdoing that he alleges occurred in this case is very common in Florida nursing homes. In this case, the vehicle used was the nonprofit corporation. In other cases, the vehicle used is the limited liability company or LLC. Regardless of the corporate form, the result is always the same. A complicated structure of interlocking corporations is used to siphon money away from nursing home patient care and into the hands of the individuals that are pulling the strings. The complicated corporate structure insulates the wrongdoers at the top from responsibility for the injury, neglect, abuse, and death that occurs in the nursing homes while simultaneously protecting the corporate assets from judgments and collection efforts by Florida nursing home neglect attorneys. In fact, the insulation is so complete that most of them do not even bother to obtain liability insurance. Often the wrongdoers are never held accountable for diverting money that should be used for nursing home patient care into their pockets.
Accountability is avoided because of the way the law allows nursing home operators to layer interlocking corporations. I will discuss the interlocking structures in the next post.
The Florida Insurance Commission has been investigating rate increases in Florida for over a year. As part of the investigation, the Commission subpeoned documents from Allstate in October of 2007. As described in a previous post, Allstate's refusal to honor the subpeona began a series of court battles that ended in May of 2008 with Allstate agreeing to turn the documents over. A hearing was set for September 15, 2008 before an Administrative Court Judge to decide whether all the documents were provided; whether Allstate falsely claimed the documents contained trade secrets; and whether Allstate falsely certified its original rate increase of more than 40 percent. The hearing has been cancelled because Florida regulators have reached a limited agreement with Allstate to resolve these issues.
The agreement requires Allstate to pay a $5 million dollar fine; lower its homeowners insurance rates in Florida by 5.6%; write 100,000 new homeowners insurance policies over the next three years; and cancel a 175 million dollar debt Allstate's Florida subsidiary owes the parent company. In exchange Florida will not pursue the issues that were set for hearing on September 15, 2008. Insurance Commissioner McCarty stated "It's unfortunate that Allstate's disregard for Florida's laws required the office to take such drastic actions, however, I'm glad that we've reached this agreement. We're looking forward to restoring the confidence of Allstate insurance companies."
The agreement does not end all investigations into Allstate's insurance practices in Flroida. Commissioner McCarty indicated an investigation into Allstates claims handling practices and potential collusion with rating organizations, trade associations and other entities will continue.
Scott Distasio
Tampa Personal Injury Lawyer
DISTASIO LAW FIRM
HELPING INJURED PEOPLE
OFFICES: TAMPA
888-595-0022
Tampa premises Liability Lawyer
State Farm recently requested a rate increase for its homeowner policies of nearly 50%. The request from State Farm came at the heels of a recent court showdown between another homeowner insurance company, Allstate, and the state of Florida over disclosure of documents used by Allstate to set its insurance rates. The dispute with Allstate ended in May of this year when Allstate after losing in court, finally turned over the documents.
It appears that State Farm is not having any more success with Florida regulators than Allstate. On August 25, 2008, the State Insurance Commission rejected State Farm's rate hike request. Deputy Insurance Commissioner Belinda Miller said, "State Farm did not provide appropriate support for the rate increase it requested. State Farm spokesman Chris Neal disagreed stating, "We did provide strong support for this rate request."
In a news release, state regulators said that State Farm overstated its hurricane risk by adjusting hurricane loss models to show losses four times greater than what they would have been.
Another area of concern for the State may be how State Farm is accounting for reinsurance costs. Reinsurance occurs when an insurance company purchases insurance from another insurance company to spread the risk of covering catastrophic losses. State Farm, like most insurance companies has created a separate subsidiary to do business in Florida. Instead of purchasing reinsurance on the open market, State Farm Florida purchases approximately 550 million dollars per year of reinsurance from its parent company State Farm Mutual. Because State Farm is allowed to present itself as separate companies, State Farm Mutual charges State Farm Florida the retail cost of purchasing reinsurance. The fiction allows State Farm Florida to present itself as losing money when in fact, the transaction really just transfers profits from the Florida company to the parent company. If this fiction was not allowed, the transaction would be presented on State Farm Florida's books at actual cost instead of the inflated retail charge that includes a profit for the parent company.
Scott Distasio
Tampa personal injury lawyer
DISTASIO LAW FIRM
HELPING INJURED PEOPLE
888-595-0022
According to http://www.drivealert75.com the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is launching a new safety campaign aimed at reducing deaths and crashes on Interstate 75 (I-75) in Florida. The campaign is called "Guard Your Life-Drive Alert On I-75 and is designed to reduce head on motor vehicle crashes. FDOT is teaming up with public and private entities to deliver the message. The plan is to deliver the message of driver safety awareness and driver education through the use of websites, public service announcements, billboards, posters and promotional items.
One of the main entities involved is The Florida Trucking Association. In addition to promoting the "Guard Your Life-Drive Alert On I-75" campaign during the National Truck Driving Championship competion called the "Rodeo", The Florida Trucking Association will also set up a special 18-member road team to speak about safety. The road team plans to go into local high schools in Hillsborough, Pasco, and Hernando counties to help promote driver safety on I-75. The all volunteer professional truck drivers will teach driver education students about the importance of driver safety.
The state of Florida's efforts to try to improve driver safety on I-75 in Florida through a safety campain is a good first step. As Angie Atalla pointed out in her webposting on the subject at http://www.tampabays10.com there were 4,702 motor vehicle accidents from Hillsborough/Manatee counties to Hernando/Sumter counties on I-75 from January 2004 through May 2007. The accidents included all types of automobile accidents including car crashes, truck crashes, and motorcycle crashes. 3160 crashes involved injuries and 66 involved deaths.
Scott Distasio
Tampa Auto Accident Lawyer
DISTASIO LAW FIRM
HELPING INJURED PEOPLE
OFFICES:TAMPA
888-595-0022
Tampa personal injury lawyer
Kevin McCarty, Florida's Insurance Commissioner, has been locked in what seemed to be a never ending battle with Allstate Insurance Company to force the company to comply with his subpeona for documents. To read more you can review my previous post. The fight started last year when the state began looking into why insurance companies in Florida were asking for rate increases of close to 42%. As part of the investigation McCarty requested that Allstate turn over documents that would allow his office to independently assess the need for its requested increase. Although Allstate has turned over upwards of 550,000.00 pages of documents, Commissioner McCarty has concluded the documents produced were not all the documents he requested. As a result, on January 16, 2008, McCarty issued a ban on Allstate issuing new insurance policies in Florida until it fully complies with his request. Allstate has, up until now, successfully skirted both the production of the documents and the ban on writing new insurance policies.
Florida personal injury lawyers are all too familiar with Allstate's tactics. Allstate's strategy was the same strategy it often employs in personal injury lawsuits. It objected to producing documents on trade secret grounds; it produced massive volumes of documents that were not relevant to the inquiry; it claimed it had fully complied; it publically asserted it was being treated unfairly by the state; and it appealed the Insurance Commissioners right to obtain the additional documents and ban it from writing new policies. The First Disrict Court of Appeal placed a stay on enforcement until it decided Allstate"s Appeal. The affect of the stay was to allow Allstate to hold on to the documents and continue writing new insurance policies from the time it appealed in January until now.
On May 14, 2008, the First District Court of Appeals finally ruled on Allstate's Motion for Rehearing of its April 4, 2008 denial of Allstates Appeal. Based on the Court's ruling, it appears Allstate's luck finally ran out. First District Court of Appeals Judge Paul Hawkes wrote "Allstate's willful, indeed potentially criminal, failure to comply with its disclosure obligations has prevented OIR from adequately investigating its reasoned belief that Allstate is systematically defrauding its policyholders." Not only did the Court deny Allstate's request for a rehearing of its April 4, 2008 decision to side with the Insurance Commissioner, but it refused to certify the matter to the Florida Supreme Court as a matter of great public importance. The decision will make it very unlikely that Florida's highest Court will take up the matter.
As a result of the Courts decision, it appears Allstate has finally gotten the message and provided all of the requested documents. Insurance commissioner McCarty said in a statement today, May 17, 2008, that after the court's ruling, Allstate provided an affidavit certifying that it complied with Florida law by providing all documents requested by his office. "I have stayed the suspension of Allstate, and I have accepted its affidavit as evidence that they have completely and unconditionally complied with Florida law and with our requests for documents," McCarty said. "I also, though, have made it perfectly clear that failure to cooperate with necessary, ongoing requests from the office will result in an immediate resumption of the suspension."
The Office of Insurance Regulation will now comb through the records and complete its investigation. We will have to wait to see what the documents show regarding the legitimacy of the rate hike requests that started this process. However, at the very least, the process has demonstrated that the state of Florida seems to have an Insurance Commissioner that is willing to put his own self interest aside to do what is right for the people of Florida.
Scott Distasio
Tampa Personal Injury Lawyer
DISTASIO LAW FIRM
HELPING INJURED PEOPLE
OFFICES: TAMPA
1-888-595-0022
Tampa auto accident attorney
On January 16, 2008, Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty abruptly stopped a hearing before it was completed after becoming frustrated with what he apparently perceived as Allstate purposefully not complying with his requests for documents. The hearing was part of the state's investigation into why insurance companies including Allstate had sought to increase rates by almost 42%. Allstate refused to provide all of the documents requested claiming they were either confidential trade secrets and or not relevant to the inquiry. Many of us that represent clients in personal injury lawsuits against Allstate and its insured's are used to similar stalling tactics. Often the tactic works in Allstate's favor. This time it seems to have backfired on them.
Insurance Commissioner McCarty was so irritated with Allstate's failure to comply that he suspended the various Allstate companies' right to sell new insurance policies in the state of Florida until they produce the documents requested. Initially Allstate ignored the request and appealed the Commissioner's decision to the 1st District Court of Appeals. The appellate court gave Allstate a reprieve from handing over the documents until it decided whether the Insurance Commissioner had the authority to order the production of the documents. On April 4, 2008, the court sided with the Insurance Commissioner. According to some media outlets, under the court's current order, Allstate has until April 14, 2008 to produce the documents. Allstate itself has announced it has until April 19, 2008 to decide how it will proceed.
If History serves as any predictor of future conduct, then I would not count on Allstate timely producing the documents requested. In typical Allstate fashion, they flooded the public domain with 150,000 pages of documents by posting them on their website. Allstate had previously produced over 400,000 pages of documents. It has used the sheer volume of documents produced as a smokescreen to suggest that it is fully cooperating with the state to produce the documents requested. The response attempts to portray Allstate as a victim. These stalling tactics and attempts to demonize anyone asking them for unflattering information often works in personal injury lawsuits because it usually takes many years for a civil lawsuit to make it through the appellate process. Allstate simply wears out its opponents. However, the appellate process in this instance was substantially shorter. The first round of Appeals was over in less than three months. Furthermore, the state of Florida is not your typical Allstate opponent. The state has the financial resources to match Allstate dollar for dollar.
As Commissioner McCarty stated, "They have created their own situation. They have blatantly and flagrantly ignored the law. They did not take this process seriously. The only effective and rational response was a suspension of business." One has to wonder, If Allstate has clean hands, why not produce the documents for inspection instead of wasting the state of Florida's time and money fighting the subpeona.
Scott Distasio
Tampa Personal Injury Lawyer
DISTASIO LAW FIRM
HELPING INJURED PEOPLE
OFFICES: TAMPA
1-888-595-0022
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