Indian trust mismanagement case goes to trial
National News
The US District Court for the District of Columbia began hearings Monday in Cobell v. Kempthorne, a class-action suit brought in 1996 alleging US government mismanagement of trust funds for a group of some 500,000 Native Americans and their heirs. Judge James Robertson will decide how much the government owes the class members for land-use violation penalties and royalties that plaintiffs say the US Department of the Interior (DOI) has not paid since 1887. In March 2007, the plaintiffs rejected a $7 billion settlement proposal from the US government, and have since asserted that the DOI owes them $58 billion. In January, Robertson ruled that the DOI "unreasonably delayed" the accounting of billions of dollars of American Indian money, holding that it was impossible for the DOI or for Congress to remedy the breach.
In July 2005, Judge Royce Lamberth ruled, that the DOI must apologize to the plaintiffs for its handling of the trust, and must admit that information being provided to them regarding outstanding lost royalties on earnings from Indian land may be unreliable. Lamberth also held two former Secretaries of the Interior, Gale Norton and Bruce Babbitt, in contempt and forced the department to protect Indian files by disconnecting its computers from the Internet. In 2006, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit removed Lamberth for alleged lack of objectivitgy and reassigned the case to Robertson.
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Workers’ Compensation Subrogation of Administrative Fees and Costs
When a worker covered by workers’ compensation makes a claim against a third party, the workers’ compensation insurance retains the right to subrogate against any recovery from that third party for all benefits paid to or on behalf of a claimant injured at work. When subrogating for more than basic medical and indemnity benefits, the Texas workers’ compensation subrogation statute provides that “the net amount recovered by a claimant in a third‑party action shall be used to reimburse the carrier for benefits, including medical benefits that have been paid for the compensable injury.” TX Labor Code § 417.002.
In fact, all 50 states provide for similar subrogation. However, none of them precisely outlines which payments or costs paid by a compensation carrier constitute “compensation” and can be recovered. The result is industry-wide confusion and an ongoing debate and argument with claimants’ attorneys over what can and can’t be included in a carrier’s lien for recovery purposes.
In addition to medical expenses, death benefits, funeral costs and/or indemnity benefits for lost wages and loss of earning capacity resulting from a compensable injury, workers’ compensation insurance carriers also expend considerable dollars for case management costs, medical bill audit fees, rehabilitation benefits, nurse case worker fees, and other similar fees. They also incur other expenses in conjunction with the handling and adjusting of workers’ compensation claims. Workers’ compensation carriers typically assert, of course, that, they are entitled to reimbursement for such expenditures when it recovers its workers’ compensation lien. Injured workers and their attorneys disagree.