Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Remember the $165 million in bonuses that American International Group (AIG) awarded to its executives after accepting more than $170 billion in federal bailout money? Those bonuses, which have become a symbol of corporate greed and self-indulgence in the eyes of many Americans, were approved by former Unum CEO James F. Orr. Orr is now an AIG director and serves as chairman of its “executive compensation committee.”

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Barron’s ran an article this month that claimed the disability insurer Unum “may be casting its numbers in an overly rosy light” in an effort to appear profitable and attract investors. The article, which can be read here, casts doubt about Unum’s reported health: “To hear company officials tell it, Unum Group is emphatically on the mend, this after the disability insurer was wracked by scandal and losses earlier in the decade.”

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Columnist Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota and founder of three newspapers, recently wrote a heartbreaking piece about Andy Torres, a fellow Sioux who had served his country faithfully for many years, only to have his country turn its back on him when he became injured and needed help. I read Giago’s column about Torres in the Native American Times.

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The American Association for Justice (AAJ) recently ranked Unum number two in its published list of Ten Worst Insurance Companies in America. The report opens with an overview of the insurance industry’s staggering assets and wealth, which amount to just under $4 trillion – higher than the gross domestic product of every country in the world except for the U.S. and Japan. But despite the riches, despite the $1 trillion in annual premiums, and despite enormous profit margins, many insurance companies continue to employ “Deny, Delay, Defend” strategies in dealing with their policyholders.

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UnumProvident’s trial has begun in federal court in Boston. The insurance conglomerate has been accused of fraudulently sticking the federal government with several million dollars in disability claims. Some of the allegations made against the UnumProvident include an apparent cost-cutting scheme in which the company directed its claimants to file for Social Security disability insurance benefits first, knowing that they were completely unqualified for such benefits. Claimants who failed to follow this procedure by not filing a claim with Social Security first had their benefits cut.

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