Texas Tribune: Insurer pays Travis DA to prosecute

[Winehole23]

If he had it to do over again, Odessa native Roy Kyees would have ignored what the doctor told him. He would have walked out of that office and never filed a work injury claim for his back pain. He would have just paid for it out of his own pocket.


Then he never would have tangled with the largest provider of workers’ compensation insurance in Texas. He never would have gotten indicted for insurance fraud. Never would have been arrested and put in leg chains in his hometown jail.
Then again, Kyees didn’t know in January 2006 what he knows now: that his insurance company not only hired the investigators who compiled the case against him; it also pays the salaries of the government prosecutors who got him indicted on felony fraud charges.


Unlike other insurance companies in the state, Texas Mutual Insurance Company (https://www.texasmutual.com/) enjoys an exclusive deal with the Travis County district attorney.


Both the prosecutors and company executives say the arrangement benefits Texas businesses by cutting down on costly fraud and keeping workers’ compensation insurance affordable.


“All we agree to do is reimburse the Travis County prosecutor for the cost of handling our cases,” said Tim Riley, chief of fraud investigations at Texas Mutual. “Our interest, our ability to influence anything, ends at the door.”
But that hasn’t stopped critics from calling the funding deal a classic conflict of interest.


A six-month Texas Tribune and Austin American-Statesman investigation reveals a series of troubling issues with the chummy partnership — including an absence of written procedural safeguards, a lack of awareness of terms and conditions in the contract authorizing the relationship, and what some say are inappropriate statements made on social media by the lead prosecutor of the unit.

http://apps.texastribune.org/paid-to-prosecute/

[Winehole23]

The charges that he defrauded the company were dropped, and he later sued the mega-insurer for wrongful prosecution. The suit was settled in 2013.

[Winehole23]

After engaging in the fight of his life to clear his name and healing from the humiliation of an arrest, Kyees prevailed in his criminal case and ultimately obtained a settlement in a malicious prosecution lawsuit. But he remains embittered.


Travis County prosecutors “just take whatever Texas Mutual hands them,” he said in an emotional June interview. “I don’t think an insurance company should have that much power to do people like that — just treat them however they want to and then have district attorneys just taking their word for it.”

[Winehole23]

In Travis County, the arrangement is singularly focused on one company: Texas Mutual makes the referrals, provides the investigators and directly pays all the bills. At one time the company even provided office space for the lead prosecutor.

[Winehole23]

Betty Blackwell, who represented a Southeast Texas trucking company prosecuted by the Texas Mutual-funded unit, accused the giant insurer of using the criminal justice system to collect debts it couldn’t get in the normal dispute resolution process or in state civil court.


“It doesn’t pass the stink test. It just feels bad,” she said. “It smells bad that a particular corporation can have a special arrangement with the DA’s office. Instead of seeking a civil arrangement, they get the DA to get their money for them.”

[Winehole23]

Because he was charged with a felony, Kyees lost his concealed handgun permit. He had to check in with the bail bondsman every Sunday for over a year and had to inform them anytime he left town.

[Winehole23]

He was lucky that he filed his civil lawsuit against Texas Mutual before February 2015, when the Texas Supreme Court ruled that workers’ compensation carriers can no longer be sued for malicious prosecution (http://www.texastribune.org/2015/02/27/insurance-companies-score-new-victory-supreme-cour/). The only remedy available now to someone in Kyees’ shoes is to file a complaint with the state’s Division of Workers’ Compensation — a process that doesn’t produce a dime for the defendant even if the agency substantiates the complaint and fines the company.

[boutons_deux]

Inside Corporate America’s Campaign to Ditch Workers’ Comp

One Texas lawyer is helping companies opt out of workers’ compensation and write their own rules. What does it mean for injured workers?

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-corporate-americas-plan-to-ditch-workers-comp

Texas fucks over its citizens, and they keep voting to get fucked over.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Sounds a lot like bribery of a public official. Going after Perry for political convenience but not this is a stain on the Texas dems.

[Winehole23]

if voters don't make the Travis DA pay (and they probably won't) the State of Texas can do something about it (and it probably won't.)

optics are horrible, but the class of people affected is probably too small to make a difference.

[CosmicCowboy]

Texas Mutual is a non-profit actually affiliated with the state. Overall they have done a great job.

[FromWayDowntown]

It has long become apparent that in most corners of Texas, businesses are more important than the people they serve, particularly when those businesses are insurers.

Texas law has become devoted to protecting the interests of insurers, generally at the expense of genuinely injured people, through a death spiral that seems intended to completely eviscerate the potential for tort recovery in virtually any case. Even people who are seriously injured through no fault of their own frequently find themselves unable to recover from those who injured them because the civil justice system (abetted by both the Legislature and the Supreme Court) makes an arbitrary determination that tort liability should not exist in a given circumstance. Coupled with onerous procedural burdens that even middle-class citizens would find difficult to bear (from an expense standpoint), the end of tort liability in Texas -- even in non-frivolous cases -- is seemingly near. That's great for businesses, but it's hideously unfair to the people that are injured by the activities of those businesses.

This is simply a variation on the theme. It looks unseemly to me.