Opinions & Reports

Myth Busters & the Brick Layer

This week Myth Busters, the TV show on Discovery Channel in which they do experiments to which which myths are true and which are false, did an experiment to see if the following story could be true.

 Dear Sir:

I am writing in response to your request for additional information in block 3 of the accident report form. I put “poor planning” as the cause of my accident. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.

I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a six story building. When I completed my work, I found I had some bricks left over which, when weighed later were found to be slightly in excess of 500 lbs. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then, I went down and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the bricks. You will note in block 11 of the accident report form that my weight is 135 lbs.

Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel which was now proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed. This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken collarbone, as listed in section 3 of the accident report form.

Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of the excruciating pain as I now was beginning to experience.

At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, that barrel weighed approximately 50 lbs. I refer you again to my weight.

As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent, down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up.

This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and severe lacerations of my legs and lower body. Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked.

I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks, in pain, unable to move, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of the rope and I lay there watching the empty barrel begin its journey back onto me. This explains the two broken legs.

Well, they did a test with a wood barrel of bricks and a dummy and ……. it did not work.

But they then filled up the entire barrel with bricks and put a block of wood on the ground where the barrel would hit. It not only worked but it was as funny to see as it was the first time to read it.

 Happy Holidays

Solutions to Common Problems

To suggest a Common Problem that you’d like to see on this list, send an email to TheInsider@InsideWorkersCompNY.com.

How to Make Insurers Pay the Doctors

On July 2, 2008, the Workers’ Compensation Board announced a clarification of the effects of the amended WCL §54-b, which in turn deals with the steps necessary to force a carrier to pay medical bills, steps which are not in and of themselves complete.

In Subject No. 046-207, the Board wrote that,

“The neglect or failure of a carrier or self–insured employer to pay awards for medical bills in a timely manner has a significant impact on the ability of all injured workers to obtain effective and immediate treatment, as it discourages health care providers from seeking or retaining authorization to treat workers’ compensation claimants. Additionally, it may result in the health care provider seeking direct payment from the claimant, despite the statutory prohibition against direct payments. A claimant’s ability to obtain proper medical treatment expeditiously not only benefits the claimant, but also results in lower medical costs for employers. Claimants who receive prompt and proper attention are more likely to be able to return to work swiftly and less likely to have long term disabling conditions.”

For years the WCB had made available to the providers of medical service the HP-1 form which should be submitted when the health provider has been unsuccessful in obtaining payment from a carrier for more than 45 days after the services have been rendered to the claimant. This form, in use since 1997, replaced an earlier version in effect since 1994. Unfortunately, the carriers have since 1997 treated the new HP-1 with the same concern they did with the earlier HP-1 form issued in 1994: they would often ignore it. Hence the new HP-J1 form and the July 2, 2008 announcement.

But, in The Insider’s opinion, this is like telling a child who has stolen a cookie that, unlike the first time when you were ‘angry’, this time you are ‘really angry’. This process also places the burden on the medical provider to file pages and pages of HP-J1’s every week or so, when the deadline has passed so that they do not have tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills before filing the HP-1/J1 or awaiting the largess of the carrier before they get paid.

But in reality there is a far simpler method, one which relieves the doctors of the need to file HP-1’s and HP-J1’s every few weeks.

In the above Subject Number, the Board writes “The continued viability of the workers’ compensation system is substantially dependent upon voluntary compliance of all parties with the Workers’ Compensation Law, rules and regulations of the Board, and legal responsibilities imposed upon the parties.”

But what does the WCB mean by ‘voluntary compliance’. Although the firms, profit and non-profit, may have ‘volunteered’ to be in the insurance business, they are all also authorized to do business in the State of New York, some authorized by the WCB itself. After all, not every company can meet the requirement to qualify as an insurer.

So, if they cannot meet the obligations they have ‘voluntarily’ agreed to in order to make or save money as a carrier of record, the WCB should revoke or suspend that authorization when the number of HP-1’s or HP-J1’s reach a certain level, in terms of absolute quantity or dollars or some ratio of complaints to cases or whatever.

If 100 doctors file claims under §54-b against Carrier X, why should doctor #101, #102, ad nauseaum also have to file. Why can not the WCB and/or the Department of Insurance contact the carrier with a warning to pay ‘everyone’ or risk suspension or revocation.

As a commissioner I had asked this question of the administration and some legislators and have yet to have anyone tell me that this idea is wrong and/or mention any problem with it. I am usually greeted with a “Hmm, that’s interesting.” In fact I was told not to bring it up a pre-board meeting at which the commissioners are supposed to be able to discuss what they feel are relevant issues or to ask questions so that they can learn more about the system.

So, now that I have a soap box web site, I am asking, “Why doesn’t the WCB use its authority to revoke a self-insured’s right to self-insure if there are enough complaints about its failure to pay its medical bills?”

Opinions & Reports

Our Review of the WCB’s 2008 Report on Reform

The New York State Workers Compensation Board has just issued a report submitted by Chairman Zachary Weiss entitled, “The Impact of Reform on the New York State Workers’ Compensation System”, dated December 2008.

While all the information in this 13-page report is correct and accurate, it does not fully report on the entirety of the impact the recent reforms have on the system and ignore some major future problems.

Benefits for Inured Workers Increased for the first time in over a Decade

This section does not include the offset that was demanded by employers in exchange for these legitimate increases. There are now time limits for how long a claimant can collect benefits in certain categories of cases. And this is where there will be major problems that in the near future will fill up the system with large number of controverted cases.

First, where as in the past claimants wanted their injuries to be classified as soon as possible so they could collect continuing compensation without the need for ongoing medical examinations and with minimal challenges to their continuing collection of these benefits, claimants will now seek to delay such determinations in order to push further out into the future the time limits that come with classification.

Second, the degree of classification in incremental classes of 5% to 10% will cause additional controversy as each step up by 5% or 10% will mean a longer time limit before benefits are stopped. It has been difficult enough over the years to determine is a claimant has a moderate (called 50% but ranging from ±42% to ±57%) or a ‘moderate/marked’ (66-2/3% but ranging from ± 57% to ±70%). For someone whose maximum rate under the new benefits could be $600 next year, each additional 1% increase is worth $6.00 a week tax free. Thus a moderate degree which can range from ± 42% to ±57% could have a variance of $78.00 a week. But under the new reforms, the claimant who is set at 49% would get $88,200 ($600 x 49% x 300 weeks maximum) as compared to a claimant classified with a 51% disability who would get an additional 21.4% in compensation for his extra 2% disability: $107,100 ($600 x 51% x 350 weeks maximum).  This is a difference of $18,900 for a 2% difference in degree of disability.

And even if the law judges and commissioners are told that any degree of disability that is close to a higher level automatically should be rated at the higher level, i.e. we will never then see a 47%-50% disability again, the carriers will fight for the 2% or 3% lower degree of disability.

Those of us, the commissioners and judges have been involved in trying to settlement these disputes when we have the two parties in front of us rather than a stack of cold paper reports or a computer screen, know that this is very difficult, slicing the ‘bologna’ into 1% thin slices.

Third, as noted in Chapter 20 “Medical Doctors’ Understanding” in the book Behind The Closed Doors, there is a great deal of flexibility in making theses qualitative judgments. And the 1996 Medical Guidelines, all the WCB still has to this day, will not make it any easier. Would it at all be surprising if some doctors decide to drop out of the system rather than “being subject to cross examination which would put Sam Waterston of Law & Order to Shame”? (Page 228, Chapter 20).

EMPLOYER COSTS REDUCED

Is there any possibility that the rates were lower because a number of firms, particularly a number of self-insured trusts did not charge/collect enough money to cover their projected costs? And now the rest for the industry will have to pay more to insure that there is enough money to pay the claims from these now apparently defunct self-insured trusts?

CLAIM PROCEDURES WERE STREAMLINED

The design of some new forms highlighted in this report insures that more information is available at the beginning of the case history and not developed after several hearings and adjournments. Chairman Weiss has been very effective in getting some of these adopted. One such issue dealt with Prima Facie Medical Evidence in which some commissioners, trying to enforce some basic information requirements on this issue, found themselves at odds with the powers-that-be. Chapter15 “Consistency Versus Speed – The Problem” in Behind The Closed Doors lists a number of such issues, some of which still remain to be resolved.

That cases are being done faster is correct, too. Not only are the writers who prepared the proposed decision doing their work faster, a number of commissioners, referenced as ‘insouciants’ in Behind The Closed Doors have helped the process by signing their cases as quickly as they can, saving time by not reading them. That the quality of draftsmanship and legal thinking in some of these decision leave a lot to be desired is of secondary importance in ‘getting them done’. The Board’s statistics indicate how fast cases are done. Other than The Insider’s own records, there is nothing that indicates how many of these ‘done-faster’ decisions would have been rejected by the engaged commissioners if it were they and not the ‘insouciants’ who were getting them, cases that should have been rejected for reasons ranging from really bad spelling to just basically incorrect interpretation of the law.

SELF-INSURANCE

A point not mentioned in the report is that one reason the now bankrupt self-insured trusts were able to stay in business so long is that they did not pay medical bills approved by the WCB. How many of the ‘solvent’ self-insured employer also have large liabilities, most likely NOT yet on their books, when they stall payments by 60 or 90 days or even a year?  My own experience was that, when doctors learned I was a commissioner, they would ask me what I could do to help them get bills paid that were long since approved. by the WCB. The HP-1’s were just another paper form ignored by these self-insured. And the 2007 amendment requires doctors go to civil court. Why don’t the WCB and the Department of Insurance step in, too, before it is too late?

SUMMARY

Chairman Weiss and some of his new managers are working quite hard to improve the system and I am pleased to see these changes, long wished for by the engaged commissioners. In fact, the greater use of in-person translators at hearing will go along way to making the Board more humane in its treatment of the injured workers and help offset some of the criticisms garnered by its use of raw statistic to ‘get things done faster’.

Time will tell and I, like all the practitioners, and the WCB staff, wait to see how well Chairman Weiss’ initiatives work out.

Click here for the full text of the report. . .

Solutions to Common Problems

To suggest a Common Problem that you’d like to see on this list, send an email to TheInsider@InsideWorkersCompNY.com.

An excerpt from Behind The Closed Doors

Who ‘decides’ the Decisions?

Chapter 10

In Chief Justice William Rehnquist ’s book The Supreme Court, Rehnquist goes into great length as to how the United States Supreme Court determines what cases it will hear and how it arrives at its decisions. In some ways, the Board is not that different but in other ways it is the opposite. Because the ARD/OoA gets the appeal first and writes the PMoD before the commissioners are even aware of the case, the question has always been: “Do the writers write the PMoD and the Commissioners approve it or do the writers draft a decision for the Commissioners to consider if that PMoD is appropriate?” This is a far more important issue than one may think because:

• The 60+ writers who make up the ARD/OoA are far less consistent than 12 commissioners and four panels.

• The commissioners have been appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate to further the philosophy of the Governor in their interpretation of the Workers’ Compensation law.

• To whatever extent those who do the decisions are subject to public scrutiny, it is the commissioners whose names, and the governor’s by default, that are on the decisions, and it is these commissioners whose employment is subject to periodic review (reappointment) and a governor subject to reelection. The OoA staff are civil servants, in a sense, answerable to no one.

Equally important is that over the course of time, the legal profession should have developed an understanding of the thinking of each of the commissioners as well as an understanding of how well each commissioner fits into the system. Every commissioner at one time or another has conducted a hearing at which the attorneys have appeared, hearings at which the commissioners act alone or as a member of a panel of three. As a result, the attorneys have an impression of who seems to be knowledgeable about the cases and issues before them and is able to ask pertinent and substantive questions and which commissioners sit silently throughout the entire proceedings, the insouciants of the system, and which act as the inquisitor equal to the Potemkin Village of legal inquiry.

To read more, click on Behind The Closed Doors…

Opinions & Reports

From the perspective of a former commissioner who participated in over 40,000 decisions and the drafting of several affirmed by both the Court of Appeals and the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, The Insider offers a unique interpretation of recent court decisions as well as key Memorandum of Decisions issued by the Board and the possible impact on future Board decisions. The fact that decisions are made by a panel of three commissioners does mean that different panels could have different interpretations on the same issues and all the commissioner could disagree with the opinions of The Insider.

A running Commentary - December 12, 2008

Scodary v Serritella (Decided 11/20/08)

&

Van Dam v New Paltz Schoold District (Decided 12/20/07)

In the December 4, 2008 E-Mail Alert and the comments in the Newswire, I noted that the Scodary case was a noteworthy case because the Court reversed Board on this exact same issue in December 2007 in the Matter of Van Dam.

I have now received a number of e-mails on this subject. One writer opined correctly that,

“Scodary, however, dealt with psychologists, and did not distinguish between Board-authorized and non-authorized providers, but referred specifically to the provision in §13(m) that all psychologists must be referred by a physician. The Appellate Division did reach an analogous conclusion, that psychologists’ reports can be introduced as evidence without a referral notwithstanding that the provider cannot receive payment, but the rationale was not interference with the claimant’s right to select a provider. Scodary was a reversal of the Board, but not a duplicate reversal, and in fact represented a substantial deviation from longstanding unchallenged past practice.”

The above writer is correct on one key point.

Scodary referenced §13-m (2)(a) which states that that all psychologists must be referred by a physician. Van Dam referenced §13-b (1) which states that “no person shall render medical care or conduct independent medical examination  …with authorization of the chair.” So this writer is correct in the sense that while these are two reversals, they are not on the identical issue.

But equally important is that in both cases the Court ruled that these specific sub-sections of the law which they have cited only mean that, if an exam is not properly authorized, the carrier need not pay for the cost of the exams but that the reports themselves are nonetheless valid and can be used by the law judge in making a determination.

Which bring me back to a position cited in Behind The Closed Doors. The law judges, whose output is measured as if they were production line workers, may not have the luxury of time to check out the entirety of every Appellate Court decision and every MoD issued by the Board, why isn’t there someone at the Office of the General Counsel or the Admistrative Review Bureau (formerly the Office of Appeals) who bring key cases to the attention of all the judges, commissioners, and writers? Yes, there are some districts who do have periodic meeting to discuss cases and distribute paper copies. But in a paperless world in which the Board now operates, under the time pressure to ‘perform’ as are the judges, no one can be expected to look through piles of papers to find a recent decision, assuming that they remember that there was one on the subject o which they are working. Why does everyone have to wait for Lexis Nexis to publish these cases (Appellate decisions as well as MoDs) in order for everyone to have access to key decisions?

To lay the blame at any of the attorney’s, the judges, commissioners, or even individual writers is not the answer. I proposed an answer in Chapter 16 of Behind The Closed Doors , “Consistency versus Speed – The Solution”, in which there are specific recommendation which if instituted would more than likely have avoided the Scodary reversal. And one solution is the Newswire in this website which highlights key Appellate Court decisions.

Solutions to Common Problems

To suggest a Common Problem that you’d like to see on this list, send an email to TheInsider@InsideWorkersCompNY.com.

 

Rebuttals: A Waste of Time & Money?

If an appeal is late pursuant to WCL §23, why is it not denied on that basis? This would eliminate the need for the respondent and the WCB to spend the time and money necessary to issue a rebuttal.

The Problem:

For several years, some commissioners rejected proposed decisions because the writers in the Office of Appeals (OoA) were making mistakes regarding their definition of what was a late appeal and/or rebuttal.

General Construction Law §25 states that a legal due date falling on a Saturday or Sunday was automatically moved to the next Monday (unless that Monday was a legal holiday), but the OoA quite often misstated the timeliness of appeals and rebuttals.

Sometimes, if the 30th day was a Saturday, the appeal/rebuttal was denied as being late. Sometimes if it arrived on August 1st for a decision filed July 1st, it was defined as ‘timely’ despite that fact July has 31 days. Even an Appellate Court reversal did not impact sufficiently on the WCB for the OoA and the majority of commissioners to bother to count 30 days.

The Insider offered the OoA an Excel spread sheet in which the date of the filing would be entered and it would calculate the 30th day, allowing for not only weekends but also for holidays.

With the changes in management of the OoA in early 2008, the writers apparently were informed that they had to pay attention to the 30th day but could still allow late appeals per §123, “in the interest of justice”. However, a few commissioners objected to this leniency if for no other reason that it was applied inconsistently.

Some appeals as late as four months after the filing date were accepted without any explanation as to why they were filed late. In other cases, commissioners decided to automatically reject an appeal or rebuttal filed on the 31st day unless some very good justification was given in the opening paragraph of the appeal/rebuttal.

The Administrative Review Bureau (formerly the OoA) then decided that it would accept as timely some but not all appeals that were one day late, positing that the lateness was due to WCB mail room problems. One commissioner responded, “Fix the mail room problem and find the 31st day as late.” And the Insider added, “The phrase ‘in the interest of justice’ is a preamble to an explanation, not a justification ‘in and of itself’.” And several commissioners continued to reject appeals late by one day. 99.99% of all appeals are filed timely. There is no reason that late appeals and rebuttals should be entertained without good and clearly defined cause, not for the issue but for the reason for the lateness.

The Solution:

The WCB should adopt the policy that any appeal or rebuttal filed on the 31st day is late and automatically denied. In the case of appeals, the respondent could limit their rebuttal solely to the statement, “We ask that the appeal be denied pursuant to WCL §23 as it has been filed late. The underlying decision was filed on …… and the 30 day deadline was ……. The appeal, having been filed …, is therefore late.”

The respondent would be saved the time and money involved in writing what is often a lengthy rebuttal.  And the WCB would also save the time needed to perform an in depth review of the late appeal, to draft a decision based on the issues raised in the late appeal, and to address all the issues in the rebuttal.

In cases where the appellant can give a legitimate reason for the late appeal – such as the aftermath of 9/11 when many Board deadlines were waived or some other major problem in the appellant’s office –then the WCB should advise the respondent that the appeal is being accepted and should give the respondent 30 days from the date of that letter to issue a rebuttal. For late rebuttals, the same procedure would apply.

While this may involve only 10 to 15 appeals a month out of the 1200 or so submitted for review, it is still 10 to 15 cases less for the WCB and a first step in speeding up case resolution. Remember Mao Tse-Tung: “A march of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” A case here and a case there and, the next thing you know, case resolution has been shorted by a few weeks. 

As is the case with so many potential solutions to problems facing the Board, any real solution to this problem will require the Board to make a commitment to be consistent on this issue. 

Better practices by all the parties to a dispute can only help make the system better. Also, its important that everyone who relies on the system can feel confident that there is some genuine reasoning behind the way it functions.  And insure that when a deadline has come and not timely appealed, all the parties know that, at least for one issue if not the entire case, the matter is finally closed.

The Insider’s book, Behind The Closed Doors, Chapter 14 ‘Both Sides of the Coin’ goes into more detail as to the confusion from which the Board suffers on this and other issues.

Opinions & Reports

 From the perspective of a former commissioner who participated in over 40,000 decisions and the drafting of several affirmed by both the Court of Appeals and the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, The Insider offers a unique interpretation of recent court decisions as well as key Memorandum of Decisions issued by the Board and the possible impact on future Board decisions. The fact that decisions are made by a panel of three commissioners does mean that different panels could have different interpretations on the same issues and all the commissioner could disagree with the opinions of The Insider.

Ronnie Ramroop v FlexoCraft Printing

Do undocumented workers qualify for continuing awards?

Note: The October 30, 2008 Appellate Court’s decision #504220 in Amah v Mallah Management confirms The Insider position that undocumented workers can qualify for compensation, citing Ramroop in its opinion. But as noted below that was not the issue in Ramroop.

As one of the authors of the Ramroop v Flexo-Craft Printing decision affirmed by the Court of Appeals on June 26, 2008, I am fascinated by the varying interpretations given to the case by the parties of interest as well as the interested parties. Because of the nature of the issue, the Board Panel (Commissioners Bargnesi, Berns, and Henry) worked carefully with the WCB’s legal staff to insure that the final decision would be sustained on appeal to the Courts.

The interesting point, however, is that, in The Insider’s opinion, neither the Court of Appeals nor the Appellate Court seemed to understand the reason the Insider in particular rejected the claim for continuing benefits. The basic issue at the original law judge’s hearing that was whether or not Ramroop, whose claim for a 1995 work-place injury was established, was qualified to continue to receive replacement wages (compensation) after 2002, when he claimed that his injuries continued to effect his ability to earn the same wages as before his injury. The fact that the claimant was an undocumented alien was not a consideration in the decision as every Commissioner at one time or another has signed a decision to establish cases for and award benefits and medical care to undocumented aliens.

The Insider’s position was that the claimant’s case was better seen from the perspective of a voluntary withdrawal for the labor market. The fact that the claimant did not qualify for Vesid because of the lack of working papers was compounded by the fact that the claimant acknowledged that he made to no attempt to seek working papers, before or after the injury. All workers in New York State are covered by workers’ compensation, a no-fault guarantee of medical care and wage replacement. Aliens, regardless of immigration status, and citizens alike have the right to workers compensation benefits. (See matter of Testa v. Sorrento Restaurant, Inc. (Tagminco Corp.), 10 A.D.2d 133, 197 N.Y.S.2d 560 (3d Dept. 1960), lv. denied, 8 N.Y.2d 705, 201 N.Y.S.2d 1025, 167 N.E.2d 650 (1960)).

As a matter of precedent, the one attempt to raise the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) as interpreted by the Unites State Supreme Court in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v NLRB (535 US137 [2002]) as a bar to benefits was addressed by the WCB in April 2005 in WCB# 4030-9563 Excel Recycling Corp in which the carrier appealed the award of WC benefits to an illegal alien on the grounds that the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) as interpreted by the Unites State Supreme Court in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v NLRB (535 US137 [2002]) preempts the WCB policy of disregarding an employee’s illegal status when making awards.

Actually, contrary to the carrier’s stated position, it is not the WCB policy; it is the WC Law §17 which requires this. However, the A.D. did not rule on this issue but instead accepted the Board’s rebuttal that since the issue was not raised at the hearing in question the Board was within its right to refuse to consider the appeal. As such, through the date of this decision entered July 27, 2006, the A.D. has not addressed the issue of the relationship between WCL §17 and IRCA.

Had the claimant attempted to seek working papers, there could have been three outcomes. First, had he been approved for working papers, he could possibly have qualified for Vesid. Second, the approval could still have been pending, in which case it is possible that the Panel would have held awards in abeyance pending the approval/denial. Third, he could have been denied working papers in which case he could have sought jobs and/or training through programs that did not require documents, programs for which there are many in New York State. And had he submitted such a list to prove his attempt to seek work, he may have been granted compensation.

The Insider’s position in this case is that the decision does not bar future benefits, only those sought up to the time of the original Law Judge hearing on which the appeal to the Board was based. If, after that date, the claimant either seeks to qualify for working papers or seeks job training elsewhere, and/or gets a lower paying job, lower paying due to this injury, he could return to the Board and very likely get compensation. It is important to note that had the Board Panel on this decision been different, so could have been the decision, just as any future decisions on this claimant or any other injured worker could vary depending on the three commissioners assigned to participate in it.

Unfortunately, while the Board Panel based its decision on the claimant’s failure to meet the standard for returning to the workplace, both sides of the case, including those who filed Amicus Curiae, sought to make this a major political fight on the issue of illegal immigration. It is the Insider’s opinion that everyone was so busy fighting for the ‘forest’, they let one of the ‘trees’ get cut down.