DIRECT FROM THE HORSE'S (Claims Administrator) MOUTH

All,

We are diligently working on preparing the claim reports.  Due to the number of claim reports and the amount of quality assurance time to review the reports, it will take us a couple of more business days than we originally anticipated to mail.  We now plan to mail the letter and accompanying instructions on November 4, 2015.  Please note for the 37 Participating Publishers, Ken provided us with email addresses, and we plan to email their cover letter and instructions.      

Thanks,

Brian

Brian StoneSenior Project Manager, Operations

  Garden City Group, LLC

That will start the six to eight months estimate of my last post. 

For questions chalmerscd@gmail.com

PROGRESS AND DELAY

There has been progress, but it has been start and stop. A goal in the last 3-4 months was for the Claims Administrator to creat a test report  ("beta test") to one or two publishers to test that its preparations for reports to 4600 publishers were valid. Just developing the instructions for that report and the instructions that would go to the publishers with their report took up roughly two months before the report and have been worked on since May. That report went out on August 25th. There were errors. A revised report went out on September 24th. The need to send reports to about 800 publishers has been avoided. Each of those 800 had less than $25 in claims against them.

The Claims Administrator is now finalizing the process of sending reports to 3800 publishers and providing for the publishers to respond (either with questions or disputes about the claims) to the reports. I would guessestimate that will take 30 days. Once those go out, it starts several clocks runing establishing some outside limits on how much longer this can go on. The various clocks are triggered by different events so I can't simply say X days or months. But roughly speaking, those reports start a 6-8 month period at the end of which, theoretically, payments could go out.

UPDATE

Claims processing continues to progress very slowly. In my last post I said there were 1600 publishers involved. Wrong, there are about 4600! I said defense agreed not to seek reimbursement from those owing less than $10,000. Wrong, that issue not yet resolved or clear. Estimate in June was 6 to 9 months. Six from then out of the question; 9 from then still possible.

Several weeks ago the Administrator's lead management person for this effort, which I believe has to be one of the most complicated claims processes (actually two processes) ever, ceased employment with the the Administrator. He had supervised it since claims processing started last August.

ESTIMATE FOR PAYMENT OF CLAIMS

My current estimate of the earliest time when payments can be expected is 6 to 9 months from now. I did not agree with the estimate put on the settlement website in February, so that advice said it was the advice of the A/B counsel. They refused to put my view on the site, which at that time was 3 to 6 months beyond September of this year. I have been trying for two weeks to develop a new estimate with them, but so far no luck.

Trying to assign blame for delays would only lead to endless argument. None of the class counsel are doing anything to delay the progress. The main reason is that this is one of the most complicated settlements in class action history. It is really two settlements. One for the class members against the databases, and a second one in which the databases make claims against the publishers that gave them the class member works. There are approximately 1600 such publishers. A major step forward was taken in the last week when the databases agreed to not seek reimbursement from publishers that owe less than $10,000. That eliminated the need for about 900 reports, and amounted to the databases accepting around $400,000 of liability. But there are still round 600 that have to be prepared.

I will start posting here more frequently on progress and payment estimates.

STALL OF CLAIMS PROCESSING

Processing has stalled because of a problem. In 2005 the then class counsel, today know as A/B counsel because they represent the A and B category claims, posted advice on the settlement website for people who had syndicated their articles. In essence the advice said for each such article you only have one claim, but for amount paid to the author, which determines the compensation for B and C claims, the claimant should submit the total paid by all syndicating publications. It is know some claimants did this. I don't know how many.

Later, after all the appeals, the AB counsel agreed, at the insistence of the Defense, that the advice was wrong, inconsistent with the settlement. If they knew then (2013) that the claims database had a problem because of that advice, they didn't tell me.

I've discovered in the last month that there is a problem. For the people who submitted claims that way, the data base doesn't have the information necessary for proper presentation of claims to the Defense, so that process can't even start. That process, and the process of getting publisher and database money to pay claims, is an estimated six months mimimum.

There have been discussions about the problem, but no solution yet. The situation is testy because I think the AB counsel are responsible for the problem.

I'm presenting the problems to Judge Daniels immediately, but court processes are notoriously slow.

IF ANYONE KNEW ABOUT THAT SYNDICATION ADVICE IN 2005, OR USED IT, OR SPOKE TO CLASS COUNSEL ABOUT IT, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

CHALMERSCD@GMAIL.COM

Estimate for payments

The A/B counsel have posted on the settlement website their estimate that "at present, the earliest that payments can be expected is in the third quarter of this year, 2015, especially if there are objections or disputes over claims."

I would not approve that post. I believe that it is seriously misleading. Based on current status, I believe there is virtually no chance of payments in the third quarter. There is a theoretical possibility, but it would require the involved publishers, and then the involved databases, to take much less than their allotted time to perform tasks which lead to the payment of the claims. To the extent that "at the present" suggests there is any chance that the timing could improve and payments become more likely in the third quarter it is even more seriously misleading. 

There are 233 days allotted for the publishers and databases. There are circumstances which could extend those allocations and it is impossible to predict the possibility of those circumstances. There are over 5000 publishers who must take an action in this process. This aspect of the settlement may make it one of, if not the, most complicated class action claims processing ever. The actions to be taken to start the 233 days running have not been completed and I am unable to provide an estimate of when they will be completed. 

I will be posting regularly here now on claims processing procedures, progress and problems. 

Many or most of you will be infuriated by this delay. Unfortunately, there is no place to effectively complain or urge greater speed. The procedures are what they are. Have the actions of class counsel in general, or any particular class counsel, aggravated this situation. The answer in my view is yes, but now is not the time to discuss that. Getting this done has my full attention and all of my time that my responsibilities require. 

If anyone in the class, C claim or otherwise, observed the advice on the settlement website in 2005, quoted below, and filed their claim with this advice in mind, it might help the current status if you would contact me. chalmerscd@gmail.com.

Q. If I wrote articles as a syndicated columnist, how should I go about filing a Claim Form? Do I include a separate claim for every publisher who published a particular article, or just one claim for each article.

Q. When filing a Claim Form, syndicated columnists should fill out just one Claim Worksheet for each article. However, that worksheet should include the name of each print publication the syndicated article originally appeared in. In addition, when listing the amount received in payment for that article, list the total amount received for the article.