Found this doozy recently.  North Dakota's former Republican Insurance Commissioner Jim Poolman isn't getting much for props from a Federal Court judge in Nevada. It's so bad that even I almost feel bad for Poolman.  I'll try to give you a very brief summary of the background of the case, but I'll leave it to you to do the real legwork.

• An assortment of insurance companies -- Paul Revere Life Ins. Co and UnumProvident (d/b/a Unum Life Insurance Company of America and Provident Life and Accident Insurance Company) -- were sued by a man named G. Clinton Merrick, a partner in a venture capital firm. 
  
  
• "In 1994, Merrick made a claim for disability coverage with Paul Revere, which agreed there was "significant impairment"  and began paying the claim.  Several months later, a Paul Revere representative offered to settle Merrick's claim for the equivalent of four months of disability benefits.  After Merrick declined the offer, the insurer enlisted an independent medical examiner, who concluded Merrick's fatigue was caused by depression, not [chronic fatigue syndrome] or Lyme disease.  The insurer interpreted the reports as finding significant impairment and implying Merrick could not return to work.  After an extensive review and another settlement offer, Paul Revere denied Merrick's claim on the ground that its review showed no objective medical evidence supporting an inability to perform the duties of his occupation.  The company rejected follow-up reports from Merrick's doctors."  (This is directly quoted from http://www.justice.org/lawreporter, but you need a membership to get at it.)
  

• At the end of the first trial, a jury awarded Merrick $11.65 million, including $2 million in punitive damages against Paul Revere and another $8 million against UnumProvident.  The decision was appealed, the findings were affirmed, generally, but on August 31, 2007, the case was sent back for a new trial on the punitive damages award because of some procedural glitches (bad jury instructions).  

• It wasn't just this one guy the insurance companies were shafting.  The insurance companies had engaged in a "fifteen year scheme to cheat disabled people" out of the insurance disability benefits they were entitled to under their insurance contracts.
  

• In the second trial (same case; just straightening out problems with the damages award), the defendants -- Paul Revere and UnumProvident -- brought in a new, fresh, young expert witness to help provide a defense to their "fifteen year scheme to cheat disabled people."  The expert had just come off of a stint of serving as North Dakota's Insurance Commissioner.  His name?  Jim Poolman. 
  

• Poolman apparently didn't do so well at trial.  Here's how the trial judge perceived Poolman's testimony:

[The defendants p]resented expert testimony concerning the regulatory process with respect to these Defendants which was simply not credible for several reasons. Defendants’ regulatory expert, Mr. Poolman, had no first-hand knowledge of the regulatory process as applied to these Defendants. Mr. Poolman admitted that he did not participate in the process, did not know what documents, if any, beyond claim files, that examiners had access to, admitted that he had not even read most of the documents Defendants provided to him, and was seemingly unaware of other regulatory actions taken against Defendants by both the State of California and the State of Georgia. Even Mr. Poolman’s testimony concerning the Multistate regulatory process and how it was settled, the testimony which he was retained to provide, lacked credibility.

Federal Court Decision (at p. 24 of 39) (link after the jump.)

• Ouch.  That could leave a mark.
  

• Keeping in mind the jury had awarded just under $12 million in the first trial, in the second trial -- after Poolman was brought in to defend these companies' scheme to cheat disabled people -- the jury awarded... 

• Wait for it...  
  

Sixty million dollars. 

The trial judge had to reduce the total damages award to $50 million.  In doing so, he wrote this:

No award that his Court can make will force Defendants to disgorge all the improper profits that they obtained. As described below, these profits were obtained at the expense of physically, mentally, emotionally, and economically vulnerable individuals, through repeated actions systematically applied to deprive them of disability insurance benefits in their time of need. Defendants have engaged in such conduct both with respect to Merrick and to their other insureds for an extended period of time. Such conduct leads to the conclusion that these Defendants engaged in highly reprehensible conduct.

Federal Court Decision (at p. 28 of 39) (read this)

Former Insurance Commissioner Jim Poolman has decided to take his experience and credibility as North Dakota's former top insurance regulator and go to bat for companies that engage in a systematic scheme of "reprehensible conduct" against the least among us, and he'll do it all for the low, low price of $600.00 per hour.  Yes, Virginia.  Poolman charged these companies $600 per hour to go to Nevada and serve as an expert witness in defending their reprehensible conduct.  [Page 82, line 1, of the trial transcript; a fun read (call me if you doubt it).]) 

Here's what's troubling about this case:  Poolman holds himself out as being an advocate for consumers here in North Dakota, and our lazy, press-release-regurgitating media ignores what he did with the model viatical bill and North Dakota's law, etc., and spews it out like so many sheep. 

Now it's been confirmed that Poolman is a...

well...

He's a...

Darn it.

I already used that word once today, so I won't use it again.  Let's put it this way:  Now Poolman has shown himself to be willing to do things for money.  Dirty things.  Naughty things.  For money, Jim Poolman is willing to go to bat to help big insurance companies avoid accountability for their reprehensible conduct in harming some of the most vulnerable people.  For $600 per hour, Poolman will provide testimony that "lacks credibility" in defense of reprehensible corporate conduct.  It's sad.

But what's troubling is that you'll never read about this in a North Dakota newspaper.  You'll never see the Fargo Forum acknowledge it made a mistake when it gushed about Poolman's advocacy for insurance consumers.  The Tribune has had nothing but nice things to say about Poolman, too.  Big "consumer advocate."  Jim Poolman is their boy.  He's John Hoeven's boy.  That's more important to our media than reporting facts. That's more important to them than reporting the news.

That's what's troubling.

(For more on this click here and click here.)

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