July 7, 2010

Wal-Mart Displays Its Legal Might, Fighting $7,000 Fine in Trampling Case

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Wal-Mart Stores has spent a year and more than a million dollars in legal fees battling a $7,000 fine that federal safety officials assessed after shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at a store on Long Island on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.

The mystery, federal officials say, is why Wal-Mart is fighting so hard against such a modest fine.

It is not as if Wal-Mart has not already taken action to address any missteps and prevent another such accident. Three weeks before the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration ordered the fine, Wal-Mart, seeking to avoid criminal charges, reached a settlement with the Nassau County, N.Y., district attorney that called for the company to adopt new crowd management techniques in all 92 of its stores in New York State. At the time, Wal-Mart also agreed to create a $400,000 fund for customers injured in the stampede and to donate $1.5 million to various community programs in Nassau County.

More recently, the company announced improved crowd-control policies for all its United States stores to try to prevent such an accident from happening again.

But in fighting the federal fine, Wal-Mart is arguing that the government is improperly trying to define “crowd trampling” as an occupational hazard that retailers must take action to prevent.

Wal-Mart’s all-out battle against the relatively minor penalty has mystified and even angered some federal officials. In contesting the penalty, Wal-Mart has filed 20 motions and responses totaling nearly 400 pages and has spent at least $2 million on legal fees, according to OSHA’s calculations.

The dispute has become so heated – and Wal-Mart’s defense so vigorous – that officials at OSHA, an arm of the Labor Department, complain that they have had to devote huge numbers of staff time to the case, including 4,725 hours of work by employees in the legal office.

The company has made so many demands that Labor Department officials said they would not discuss the case except on condition of anonymity because they feared being subpoenaed about their discussions with a reporter.

On Wednesday, the dispute will reach a climax of sorts: Wal-Mart’s lawyers are scheduled to contest the fine before a federal appeals commission.

OSHA levied the $7,000 fine in response to the death of Jdimytai Damour, a 34-year-old temporary employee, who died from asphyxiation when a stampede of post-Thanksgiving shoppers at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, N.Y., busted through the doors and trampled him just before the store’s 5 a.m. scheduled opening. The crowd, estimated at 2,000 people, had been lined up for hours near a handwritten sign that said “Blitz Line Starts Here.”

In May 2009, OSHA accused Wal-Mart of failing to provide a place of employment that was “free from recognized hazards.” Specifically, the agency said the company violated its “general duty” to employees by failing to take adequate steps to protect them from a situation that was “likely to cause death or serious physical harm” because of “crowd surge or crowd trampling.”

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, says that regulators are trying to enforce a vague standard of protection when there was no previous OSHA or retail industry guidance on how to prevent what it views as an “unforeseeable incident.”

“OSHA wants to hold Wal-Mart accountable for a standard that was neither proposed nor issued at the time of the incident,” said David Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman. “The citation has far-reaching implications for the retail industry that could subject retailers to unfairly harsh penalties and restrictions on future sales promotions.”

Saying the company remains saddened by Mr. Damour’s death, Mr. Tovar added, “We have never had a tragedy like that in our stores, and we never want it to happen again. We are committed to learning from the incident and making our stores even safer for our customers and our associates. And we have done so.”

OSHA officials acknowledge that the agency is seeking to establish for the first time that an unruly crowd is an occupational hazard that can cause death or serious injury – and that employers must therefore develop plans to protect workers against such a hazard.

But federal officials say that in its settlement with Nassau County prosecutors, Wal-Mart had in effect already admitted that it had that responsibility and agreed to three years of monitoring. So OSHA officials question why the retailer is putting up such a fight.

OSHA officials also note that the National Retail Federation issued detailed new guidelines last fall called, “Effective Crowd Management: Guidelines on how to maintain the safety and security of your customers, employees and store.”

In its settlement with Nassau County prosecutors, Wal-Mart did not admit any wrongdoing.

“They don’t want to take responsibility realistically for what they did,” said Kenneth M. Mollins, a lawyer who represented an injured Valley Stream customer who sued Wal-Mart. “They paid all the money to settle with the district attorney to prevent a potential indictment.”

Wal-Mart officials worry that if the OSHA Review Commission upholds the $7,000 penalty and concludes that surging crowds are an occupational hazard, then OSHA will then be free to look over Wal-Mart’s shoulder whenever it has a big sale to make sure that it has taken adequate steps to control crowds.

The company is also concerned that it could face far larger fines if OSHA ever concluded that it again violated its crowd-control responsibilities. Under OSHA rules, $7,000 is the maximum fine for a serious violation, but it can impose a $70,000 fine for a willful violation.

Labor Department officials complain that over the last five months 17 percent of the available attorney hours in the department’s New York office have been devoted to the case, consuming the equivalent of five full-time lawyers.

OSHA officials say they have rarely seen a company mount such a huge and expensive defense to a fine of less than $10,000.

Wal-Mart has filed motions that sought to block the penalty by claiming inconsistent enforcement by OSHA and by questioning the constitutionality of using the “general duty” clause in this case. Wal-Mart also sought to subpoena witnesses to explore the exact cause of Mr. Damour’s death when OSHA said the main issue was the unmanageable crowd.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/business/07walmart.html?src=busln#

CHICAGO — One in five medical claims is processed inaccurately by commercial health insurers, often leaving physicians shortchanged, according to the nation’s largest doctor’s group.

The American Medical Association released its third annual report card on insurers Monday.

In past years, Medicare performed well in how quickly and accurately it paid doctors, but the AMA did not release Medicare’s data Monday to keep the focus on commercial insurers. Those private insurance companies matched their payments to what they agreed to pay doctors about 80 percent of the time.

The AMA has seen dramatic improvement from private insurers, said Dr. Nancy Nielsen, immediate past president of the group.

“It is the report card that forced them to pay attention,” Nielsen said.

Insurers got a chance to see the report card in advance of Monday’s release, she said.

The AMA rated Coventry Health Care Inc. highest of seven commercial insurers. Its national accuracy rating was about 88 percent. Anthem Blue Cross was at the bottom with an accuracy rating of 74 percent.

The AMA estimates that increasing the industry’s accuracy to 100 percent would save doctors and insurers up to $15.5 billion a year.

The group is meeting in Chicago in its first annual meeting since the passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

The AMA report card is an effort to reduce the cost of claims processing for doctors. As much as $210 billion is spent annually just to process insurance claims.

Even though Medicare pays doctors accurately, the AMA is unhappy with the way the Medicare system sets payment rates for doctors and has been lobbying for Congress to fix Medicare’s reimbursement formula. AMA President James Rohack said Monday that both Democrats and Republicans “need to step up and fix this problem permanently.”

Medicare said Monday it will hold doctors’ claims through Thursday, giving lawmakers more time to prevent a 21 percent cut, required by a 1990s deficit reduction law Congress has routinely waived in the past. The fix, already approved by the House, is pending in the Senate. The cut was technically required as of June 1, but Medicare has been holding claims in hopes lawmakers will resolve the issue.

(This version CORRECTS that AMA did not release Medicare information in report.)

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. this week settled a class action for $72.5 million alleging fraud in connection to personal injury and workers compensation payments.

The suit, filed in federal court in Connecticut in 2005, alleged that the insurance company shortchanged more than 21,000 class members who had previously settled claims with it.

“The settlement will put real money in the pockets of class members,” said plaintiffs co-counsel Carl Kravitz, a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in Washington, in a statement.

According to the suit, which also alleged violations of The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act, when Hartford settled personal injury or workers comp claims against its insureds, it often paid some or all of the settlement amount via a structured settlement.

With a structured settlement, payments are made to the injury victim over time, rather than in one lump sum. The payments are commonly funded with an annuity issued by a life insurance company.

The suit further alleged that Hartford, in funding the structured settlements, purchased the annuity from its own life insurance company without disclosure to the injury victim. As a result, Hartford allegedly retained 15 percent of the value of the settlement for itself.

In approving the settlement on Monday, Judge Janet Hall noted the agreement “resulted from arm’s-length negotiations by highly experienced counsel after almost five years of hard-fought litigation.”

Also representing the class was Silver, Golub & Teitell; Berger & Montague; and Risk Law Firm. Attorney fees have not yet been awarded.

Hartford was represented by William Jeffress, a partner at Baker Botts in Washignton, and James Bicks, a partner at Wiggin and Dana in Stamford.

This article first appeared on The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MAY 10, 2010

The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which triggered the spill spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, caught the energy world by surprise. The operator, TransOcean Ltd., is a giant in the brave new world of drilling for oil in deep waters far offshore. It had been honored by regulators for its safety record. The very day of the blast on the rig, executives were aboard celebrating its seven straight years free of serious accidents.

But a Wall Street Journal examination of Transocean’s record paints a more equivocal picture.

Nearly three of every four incidents that triggered federal investigations into safety and other problems on deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico since 2008 have been on rigs operated by Transocean, according to an analysis of federal data. Transocean defended its safety record but didn’t dispute the Journal’s analysis.

In addition, an industry survey of oil companies that hired Transocean perceived a drop in its quality and performance, including safety by some measures, compared with its peers, though it still scored tops in one safety category.

Already the largest deep-water driller, Transocean in November 2007 took over rival GlobalSantaFe in an $18 billion deal. A Journal analysis of records maintained by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that Transocean’s share of incidents in deep water investigated by the regulator has gone up since the merger, even after accounting for its increased size.

From 2005 through 2007, a Transocean rig was involved in 13 of the 39 deep-water drilling incidents investigated by the MMS in the Gulf of Mexico, or 33%. That’s roughly in line with the percentage of deep-water rigs, 30%, Transocean owned and operated in the Gulf then, according to data firm RigLogix.

Since the merger, Transocean has accounted for 24 of the 33 incidents investigated by the MMS, or 73%, despite during that time owning fewer than half the Gulf of Mexico rigs operating in more than 3,000 feet of water.

Some of Transocean’s clients have cited the merger as a reason they believe the company’s performance has dropped.

Transocean says it is committed to safety and has a strong overall safety record. Larry McMahan, Transocean’s vice president for performance, said the company investigates all incidents and adjusts its procedures accordingly. He said he believes the 2007 merger went smoothly.

“We are a learning company. We do not make the same mistakes again,” Mr. McMahan said.

The April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and has left thousands of barrels of oil a day pouring into the sea.

Besides Transocean’s record, lawmakers and Gulf Coast residents have questioned those of BP PLC, which hired Transocean to drill the well, and the MMS, a federal agency that oversees the offshore drilling industry. Those questions are likely to grow if evidence emerges that Transocean had a pattern of problems.

There were few indications of any trouble with the Deepwater Horizon before the explosion. The rig won an award from the MMS for its 2008 safety record, and on the day of the disaster, BP and Transocean managers were on board to celebrate seven years without a lost-time accident.

Toby Odone, a BP spokesman, said rigs hired by BP have had better safety records than the industry average for six years running, according to MMS statistics that measure the number of citations per inspection. BP has been a finalist for a national safety award from the MMS for the past two years. Mr. Odone wouldn’t comment on BP’s relationship with Transocean after the Gulf disaster but said BP continues to use Transocean rigs. The MMS declined to comment.

The cause of the April 20 explosion hasn’t been determined. Investigators are expected to focus on two things: a cement seal meant to keep oil and gas from escaping from a well, and the blowout preventer, a set of valves on the ocean floor that is supposed to close off a well in an emergency.

Transocean has had problems with both, MMS records show.

In 2006, regulators found, a blowout preventer failed, in part because of maintenance issues. In 2005, a well leaked drilling fluid because of problems with the cement seal.

Transocean’s Mr. McMahan said cementing issues are primarily the responsibility of an outside contractor hired by owner of the well. He said Transocean has a strong maintenance program to keep blowout preventers working.

Oil companies must inform the MMS of all offshore incidents such as injuries, fires and oil spills. The agency investigates those it deems serious and makes public its reports. Those are the incidents the Journal analyzed.

A decision to investigate an incident doesn’t mean a company broke any laws. The MMS issued citations in only a quarter of the Transocean cases it investigated since the start of 2008, mostly for failure to follow safety procedures or for small oil spills.

The MMS says it issues fines only in limited circumstances, such as spills or when workers don’t use required safety equipment. The agency can convene panels to conduct more detailed investigations into major incidents, but rarely does.

Some of the investigated incidents on Transocean’s rigs have been minor, involving incidental injuries, dropped equipment and small leaks.

MMS investigators linked several Transocean incidents to workers’ failure to follow company procedures. In a 2008 case, the Deepwater Horizon partially flooded and began to tilt after a worker removed a piece of pipe without telling those in overall charge of the vessel. Regulators didn’t find any violations.

The MMS has investigated four fires aboard deep-water drilling rigs since 2005, all operated by Transocean.

Last September, for instance, a fire broke out on a brand-new Transocean rig, the Discoverer Clear Leader. It knocked out power to the thrusters that keep the rig in position above the well—a serious situation, because if a rig drifts too far it can disconnect from the well and cause a spill. Power was restored in time.

Transocean’s Mr. McMahan said the company has trained firefighters aboard all rigs, and he didn’t believe it has a problem with fires.

In 2006, Transocean’s Discoverer Enterprise was drilling for BP in over 6,000 feet of water when a gauge suggested a leak from the blowout preventer. It took nearly an hour for a robot submarine to reach the valve and determine that it was leaking drilling fluid. The robot tried to shut down the well, but didn’t have enough hydraulic fluid to add to the valve.

A second robot shut down the well about five hours after the problem arose. Investigators estimated 54 barrels of fluid spilled into the Gulf.

MMS investigators found that debris had gotten into the blowout preventer and reduced its effectiveness. The agency said the problem was caused in part by “extended use of [the blowout preventer] without inspection/maintenance.”

Transocean said it couldn’t comment on details of the incident. BP, the owner of the well being drilled, was cited by the MMS for failing to prevent a spill.

Most incidents reported to the MMS take place in shallow water, either on “jack-up” rigs that stand on the sea floor or on small, often unmanned platforms that produce oil and gas from the thousands of wells in the Gulf drilled in the offshore industry’s 60-year history.

Transocean operates only a few rigs in shallow water. It specializes in a new frontier, drilling from huge floating rigs that are either anchored to the sea floor or kept in place with satellite-controlled thrusters. This work is done for major oil producers such as BP, Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. Transocean was founded in Louisiana in 1926 as Danciger Oil & Refining Co., and was based in the U.S. until it relocated to Switzerland in 2008, partly for tax reasons.

BP is Transocean’s biggest client in the Gulf of Mexico, hiring four of the 14 rigs the driller had there at the time of the fire. The Deepwater Horizon had worked on BP projects for years, and BP just last year extended its $500,000-a-day contract.

Oil companies typically review contractors’ safety and environmental records before hiring them. Transocean’s business could suffer if it develops a reputation for problems, said Arun Jayaram, an energy analyst with Credit Suisse in New York. “You just wonder if the incident makes it a little bit more challenging for Transocean,” he said.

Transocean’s Mr. McMahan said he didn’t believe the incident would hurt the company’s ability to find customers.

BP said last week it was asking all contractors to review their safety procedures and in particular to confirm that blowout preventers meet industry standards. Transocean is complying with the request, Mr. McMahan said.

Transocean Chief Executive Steven Newman told investors in a May 6 conference call that two rigs in India were offline in the quarter, in one case because of a problem with the blowout preventer. He said the company had “put in place a team specifically looking at the performance of the deep-water fleet” and to deal with equipment problems.

Transocean’s 2009 safety record, as measured by injuries per hour worked, is better than the overall industry average. Companywide, Transocean had 0.77 injuries per 200,000 man hours, vs. 0.81 for all offshore rigs world-wide, including those in both deep and shallow water, according to statistics compiled by the International Association of Drilling Contractors. Still, its record was worse than those of some big deep-water competitors. Noble Corp. had 0.47 injuries per 200,000 hours, and Ensco PLC had 0.6.

Safety has improved for the industry as a whole, including at Transocean, whose injury rate has fallen 16% since 2007, according to securities filings.

Transocean’s board was sufficiently concerned about safety that it eliminated all executive bonuses for 2009 after four workers died aboard rigs in separate incidents. In a securities filing 20 days before the Deepwater Horizon accident, Transocean said the move would “underscore the company’s commitment to safety” and give executives incentives to prevent accidents. The company said Mr. Newman, who took over as CEO March 1, and other managers brought the proposal to the board.

Recent years have seen a rapid increase in deep-water drilling as companies push farther out in search of oil. The number of rigs able to drill in 3,000 or more feet of water is up 43% since 2006, to 146, according to research firm ODS-Petrodata. Sixty-five more are under construction.

Contractors have struggled to find enough experienced workers. Veteran crews are sometimes poached by new competitors, leaving rigs with less-experienced workers. “You’ve had trained personnel at a shortage, people stealing experienced crews,” said Mike Smith, president of Bassoe Offshore, which advises companies on buying and selling offshore rigs. Mr. Smith said both BP and Transocean have strong safety records.

There are indications Transocean’s reputation suffered after it acquired GlobalSantaFe in 2007. Before the merger, Transocean routinely ranked near the top in surveys by Energy Point Research, which rates oil-service firms on customer satisfaction. Since the merger, Transocean’s rankings have fallen to close to the bottom in many categories.

In 2008 and 2009, the surveys ranked Transocean last among deep-water drillers for “job quality” and second to last in “overall satisfaction.” For three years before the merger, Transocean was the leader or near the top in both measures.

Transocean ranked first in 2008 and 2009 in a category that gauges its in-house safety and environmental policies. In a category that measured perceived environmental and safety record, Transocean ranked in the middle of the pack in the polls.

In anonymous comments submitted with the surveys, some customers cited the merger as a problem. “The company is so large, they don’t even know which assets and related equipment are available and when,” an engineer with a major oil company wrote last September.

Other comments were positive. Transocean “is our rig contractor of choice,” one said in 2008. A customer in 2009 called Transocean “the prototype of an offshore driller for the next several decades.”

Mr. McMahan said that the merger had gone well but that, as with most mergers, the joined companies had to learn how to communicate and work together.

“It’s a merger of two like companies with very similar cultures,” Mr. McMahan said.

—Ana Campoy contributed to this article.

Write to Ben Casselman at ben.casselman@wsj.com

Source:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704307804575234471807539054.html

February 7, 2010

Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor

By KEVIN SACK

KERMIT, Tex. — It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

When she was fingerprinted and photographed at the jail here last June, it felt as if she had entered a parallel universe, albeit one situated in this barren scrap of West Texas oil patch.

“It was surreal,” said Mrs. Mitchell, 52, the wife of an oil field mechanic and mother of a teenage son. “I said how can this be? You can’t go to prison for doing the right thing.”

But in what may be an unprecedented prosecution, Mrs. Mitchell is scheduled to stand trial in state court on Monday for “misuse of official information,” a third-degree felony in Texas.

The prosecutor said he would show that Mrs. Mitchell had a history of making “inflammatory” statements about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. and intended to damage his reputation when she reported him last April to the Texas Medical Board, which licenses and disciplines doctors.

Mrs. Mitchell counters that as an administrative nurse, she had a professional obligation to protect patients from what she saw as a pattern of improper prescribing and surgical procedures — including a failed skin graft that Dr. Arafiles performed in the emergency room, without surgical privileges. He also sutured a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger for protection, an unconventional remedy that was later flagged as inappropriate by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Charges against a second nurse, Vickilyn Galle, who helped Mrs. Mitchell write the letter, were dismissed at the prosecutor’s discretion last week.

The case has been infused with the small-town politics of this wind-whipped city of 5,200 in the heart of the Permian Basin, 10 miles from the New Mexico border. The seeming conflicts of interest are as abundant as the cattle grazing among the pump jacks and mesquite.

When the medical board notified Dr. Arafiles of the anonymous complaint, he protested to his friend, the Winkler County sheriff, that he was being harassed. The sheriff, an admiring patient who credits the doctor with saving him after a heart attack, obtained a search warrant to seize the two nurses’ work computers and found the letter.

Both sides acknowledge that the case has polarized the community, and the judge has moved the trial to a neighboring county.

The state and national nurses associations have called the prosecution an outrage and raised $40,000 for the defense. Legal experts argue that in a civil context, Mrs. Mitchell would seem to be protected by Texas whistle-blower laws.

“To me, this is completely over the top,” said Louis A. Clark, president of the Government Accountability Project, a group that promotes the defense of whistle-blowers. “It seems really, really unique.”

Until they were fired without explanation on June 1, Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Galle had worked a combined 47 years at Winkler County Memorial Hospital here, most recently as its compliance and quality improvement officers.

The nurses, who are highly regarded even by the administrator who dismissed them, said the case had stained their reputations and drained their savings. With felony charges pending, neither has been able to find work. They said they could feel heads turn when they walked into local lunch spots like El Joey’s Mexican restaurant.

“It has derailed our careers, and we’re probably not going to be able to get them back on track again,” said Mrs. Galle, 54, a grandmother who is depicted around town as the soft-spoken Thelma to Mrs. Mitchell’s straight-shooting Louise. “We’re just in disbelief that you could be arrested for doing something you had been told your whole career was an obligation.”

It was not long after the public hospital hired Dr. Arafiles in 2008 that the nurses said they began to worry. They sounded internal alarms but felt they were not being heeded by administrators.

Frustrated and fearing for patients, they directed the medical board to six cases “of concern” that were identified by file numbers but not by patient names. The letter also mentioned that Dr. Arafiles was sending e-mail messages to patients about an herbal supplement he sold on the side.

Mrs. Mitchell typed the letter and mailed it with a separate complaint signed by a third nurse, who wrote that she had resigned because of similar concerns about Dr. Arafiles. That nurse was not charged.

To convict Mrs. Mitchell, the prosecution must prove that she used her position to disseminate confidential information for a “nongovernmental purpose” with intent to harm Dr. Arafiles.

Mari E. Robinson, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, has warned in a blistering letter to prosecutors that the case will have “a significant chilling effect” on the reporting of malpractice.

The nurses’ lawyers, John H. Cook IV and Brian Carney, have filed a civil lawsuit in federal court charging the county, hospital, sheriff, doctor and prosecutor with vindictive prosecution and denial of the nurses’ First Amendment rights.

Nonetheless, the sheriff, Robert L. Roberts Jr., and the prosecutor, Scott M. Tidwell, express confidence in their case.

“The only side of the story that the town has heard is that these are sisters of mercy, missionaries of peace,” said Mr. Tidwell, who is trying the case because the district attorney is in poor health. “The town has not heard the whole story.”

Dr. Arafiles, 47, who attended medical school in his native Philippines and trained in Baltimore and Buffalo, said his lawyer had advised him not to talk. “I’ve been brutalized and abused,” he said. “I’m the victim in this case, and that is all I can say.”

Several Texas laws would seem to enshrine a nurse’s right, and perhaps duty, to report a physician when he or she believes that patients are at risk. Lawyers on both sides agree that the case will hinge on whether a jury believes that Mrs. Mitchell reported in good faith. In civil whistle-blower cases, the Supreme Court of Texas has held that good faith requires only a reasonable belief that the conduct being reported is illegal.

The hospital administrator, Stan Wiley, said in an interview that Dr. Arafiles had been reprimanded on several occasions for improprieties in writing prescriptions and performing surgery and had agreed to make changes. Mr. Wiley, who said it was difficult to recruit physicians to remote West Texas, said he knew when he hired Dr. Arafiles that he had a restriction on his license stemming from his supervision of a weight-loss clinic.

In a surprise inspection last September, state investigators found several violations by Dr. Arafiles and concluded that the hospital had discriminated against the nurses by firing them for “reporting in good faith.”

But Sheriff Roberts, who has held the post for 18 years, said the state would show that the complaint had been filed in vengeance. “If it’s made to destroy somebody’s reputation or forcing them to leave town,” he said, “then I don’t believe it is good faith.”

Sheriff Roberts called Dr. Arafiles “the most sincerely caring person I have ever met.”

Mr. Wiley said he believed that the nurses had acted in bad faith because they went to the state despite his internal efforts to discipline Dr. Arafiles. But, he said, “I don’t believe they did it on a personal vendetta.”

Mrs. Mitchell said all she saw at the hospital was delay.

“The medical staff needed to make a decision on him,” she said. “You don’t get a second chance to save somebody’s life.”

February 7, 2010

Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Edge

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY

Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months.

A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer.

A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman — like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a storm to get a bigger insurance payment — had inflated the potential losses. Goldman countered that it was owed even more, while also resisting consulting with third parties to help estimate a value for the securities.

After more than an hour of debate, the two sides on the call signed off with nothing settled, according to internal A.I.G. documents and an audio recording reviewed by The New York Times.

Behind-the-scenes disputes over huge sums are common in banking, but the standoff between A.I.G. and Goldman would become one of the most momentous in Wall Street history. Well before the federal government bailed out A.I.G. in September 2008, Goldman’s demands for billions of dollars from the insurer helped put it in a precarious financial position by bleeding much-needed cash. That ultimately provoked the government to step in.

With taxpayer assistance to A.I.G. currently totaling $180 billion, regulatory and Congressional scrutiny of Goldman’s role in the insurer’s downfall is increasing. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the payment demands that a number of firms — most prominently Goldman — made during 2007 and 2008 as the mortgage market imploded.

The S.E.C. wants to know whether any of the demands improperly distressed the mortgage market, according to people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because the inquiry was intended to be confidential.

In just the year before the A.I.G. bailout, Goldman collected more than $7 billion from A.I.G. And Goldman received billions more after the rescue. Though other banks also benefited, Goldman received more taxpayer money, $12.9 billion, than any other firm.

In addition, according to two people with knowledge of the positions, a portion of the $11 billion in taxpayer money that went to Société Générale, a French bank that traded with A.I.G., was subsequently transferred to Goldman under a deal the two banks had struck.

Goldman stood to gain from the housing market’s implosion because in late 2006, the firm had begun to make huge trades that would pay off if the mortgage market soured. The further mortgage securities’ prices fell, the greater were Goldman’s profits.

In its dispute with A.I.G., Goldman invariably argued that the securities in dispute were worth less than A.I.G. estimated — and in many cases, less than the prices at which other dealers valued the securities.

The pricing dispute, and Goldman’s bets that the housing market would decline, has left some questioning whether Goldman had other reasons for lowballing the value of the securities that A.I.G. had insured, said Bill Brown, a law professor at Duke University who is a former employee of both Goldman and A.I.G.

The dispute between the two companies, he said, “was the tip of the iceberg of this whole crisis.”

“It’s not just who was right and who was wrong,” Mr. Brown said. “I also want to know their motivations. There could have been an incentive for Goldman to say, ‘A.I.G., you owe me more money.’ ”

Goldman is proud of its reputation for aggressively protecting itself and its shareholders from losses as it did in the dispute with A.I.G.

In March 2009, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, discussed his firm’s dispute with A.I.G. in a conference call with reporters. “We believed that the value of these positions was lower than they believed,” he said.

Asked by a reporter whether his bank’s persistent payment demands had contributed to A.I.G.’s woes, Mr. Viniar said that Goldman had done nothing wrong and that the firm was merely seeking to enforce its insurance policy with A.I.G. “I don’t think there is any guilt whatsoever,” he concluded.

Lucas van Praag, a Goldman spokesman, reiterated that position. “We requested the collateral we were entitled to under the terms of our agreements,” he said in a written statement, “and the idea that A.I.G. collapsed because of our marks is ridiculous.”

Still, documents show there were unusual aspects to the deals with Goldman. The bank resisted, for example, letting third parties value the securities as its contracts with A.I.G. required. And Goldman based some payment demands on lower-rated bonds that A.I.G.’s insurance did not even cover.

A November 2008 analysis by BlackRock, a leading asset management firm, noted that Goldman’s valuations of the securities that A.I.G. insured were “consistently lower than third-party prices.”

To be sure, many now agree that A.I.G. was reckless during the mortgage mania. The firm, once the world’s largest insurer, had written far more insurance than it could have possibly paid if a national mortgage debacle occurred — as, in fact, it did.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the relationship between Goldman and A.I.G. was that without the insurer to provide credit insurance, the investment bank could not have generated some of its enormous profits betting against the mortgage market. And when that market went south, A.I.G. became its biggest casualty — and Goldman became one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Longstanding Ties

For decades, A.I.G. and Goldman had a deep and mutually beneficial relationship, and at one point in the 1990s, they even considered merging. At around the same time, in 1998, A.I.G. entered a lucrative new business: insuring the least risky portions of corporate loans or other assets that were bundled into securities.

A.I.G.’s financial products unit, led by Joseph J. Cassano, was behind the expansion. To reduce its own risks in the transactions, the company structured deals so that it would not have to make early payments to clients when securities began to sour. That changed around 2003, however, when A.I.G. began insuring portions of subprime mortgage deals. A lawyer for Mr. Cassano said his client would not comment for this article. A.I.G. also declined to comment.

Alan Frost, a managing director in Mr. Cassano’s unit, negotiated scores of mortgage deals around Wall Street that included a complicated sequence of events for when an insurance payment on a distressed asset came due.

The terms, described by several A.I.G. trading partners, stated that A.I.G. would post payments under two or three circumstances: if mortgage bonds were downgraded, if they were deemed to have lost value, or if A.I.G.’s own credit rating was downgraded. If all of those things happened, A.I.G. would have to make even larger payments.

Mr. Frost referred questions to his lawyer, who declined to comment.

Traders loved Mr. Frost’s deals because they would pay out quickly if anything went wrong. Mr. Frost cut many of his deals with two Goldman traders, Jonathan Egol and Ram Sundaram, who had negative views of the housing market. They had made A.I.G. a central part of some of their trading strategies.

Mr. Egol structured a group of deals — known as Abacus — so that Goldman could benefit from a housing collapse. Many of them were actually packages of A.I.G. insurance written against mortgage bonds, indicating that Mr. Egol and Goldman believed that A.I.G. would have to make large payments if the housing market ran aground. About $5.5 billion of Mr. Egol’s deals still sat on A.I.G.’s books when the insurer was bailed out.

“Al probably did not know it, but he was working with the bears of Goldman,” a former Goldman salesman, who requested anonymity so he would not jeopardize his business relationships, said of Mr. Frost. “He was signing A.I.G. up to insure trades made by people with really very negative views” of the housing market.

Mr. Sundaram’s trades represented another large part of Goldman’s business with A.I.G. According to five former Goldman employees, Mr. Sundaram used financing from other banks like Société Générale and Calyon to purchase less risky mortgage securities from competitors like Merrill Lynch and then insure the assets with A.I.G. — helping fatten the mortgage pipeline that would prove so harmful to Wall Street, investors and taxpayers. In October 2008, just after A.I.G. collapsed, Goldman made Mr. Sundaram a partner.

Through Société Générale, Goldman was also able to buy more insurance on mortgage securities from A.I.G., according to a former A.I.G. executive with direct knowledge of the deals. A spokesman for Société Générale declined to comment.

It is unclear how much Goldman bought through the French bank, but A.I.G. documents show that Goldman was involved in pricing half of Société Générale’s $18.6 billion in trades with A.I.G. and that the insurer’s executives believed that Goldman pressed Société Générale to also demand payments.

Goldman’s Tough Terms

In addition to insuring Mr. Sundaram’s and Mr. Egol’s trades with A.I.G., Goldman also negotiated aggressively with A.I.G. — often requiring the insurer to make payments when the value of mortgage bonds fell by just 4 percent. Most other banks dealing with A.I.G. did not receive payments until losses exceeded 8 percent, the insurer’s records show.

Several former Goldman partners said it was not surprising that Goldman sought such tough terms, given the firm’s longstanding focus on risk management.

By July 2007, when Goldman demanded its first payment from A.I.G. — $1.8 billion — the investment bank had already taken trading positions that would pay out if the mortgage market weakened, according to seven former Goldman employees.

Still, Goldman’s initial call surprised A.I.G. officials, according to three A.I.G. employees with direct knowledge of the situation. The insurer put up $450 million on Aug. 10, 2007, to appease Goldman, but A.I.G. remained resistant in the following months and, according to internal messages, was convinced that Goldman was also pushing other trading partners to ask A.I.G. for payments.

On Nov. 1, 2007, for example, an e-mail message from Mr. Cassano, the head of A.I.G. Financial Products, to Elias Habayeb, an A.I.G. accounting executive, said that a payment demand from Société Générale had been “spurred by GS calling them.”

Mr. Habayeb, who testified before Congress last month that the payment demands were a major contributor to A.I.G.’s downfall, declined to be interviewed and referred questions to A.I.G. The insurer also declined to comment for this article. Mr. van Praag, the Goldman spokesman, said Goldman did not push other firms to demand payments from A.I.G.

Later that month, Mr. Cassano noted in another e-mail message that Goldman’s demands for payment were becoming problematic. “The overhang of the margin call from the perceived righteous Goldman Sachs has impacted everyone’s judgment,” he wrote to five employees in his division.

By the end of November 2007, Goldman was holding $2 billion in cash from A.I.G. when the insurer notified Goldman that it was disputing the firm’s calculations and seeking a return of $1.56 billion. Goldman refused, the documents show.

In many of these deals, Goldman was trading for other parties and taking a fee. As the mortgage market declined, Goldman paid some of these parties while waiting for A.I.G. to meet its demands, the Goldman spokesman said. But one reason those parties were owed money on the deals was that Goldman had marked down the securities.

Adding to the pressure on A.I.G., Mr. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, advised the insurer in the fall of 2007 that because the two companies shared the same auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, A.I.G. should accept Goldman’s valuations, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. Goldman declined to comment on this exchange.

Pricewaterhouse had supported A.I.G.’s approach to valuing the securities throughout 2007, documents show. But at the end of 2007, the auditor began demanding that A.I.G. provide greater disclosure on the risks in the credit insurance it had written. Pricewaterhouse was expressing concern about the dispute.

The insurer disclosed in year-end regulatory filings that its auditor had found a “material weakness” in financial reporting related to valuations of the insurance, a troubling sign for investors.

A spokesman for Pricewaterhouse said the company would not comment on client matters.

Insiders at A.I.G. bridled at Goldman’s insistence that they accept the investment bank’s valuations. “Would we call bond issuers and ask them what the valuation of their bonds was and take that?” asked Robert Lewis, A.I.G.’s chief risk officer, in a message in January 2008. “What am I missing here, so I don’t waste everybody’s time?”

When A.I.G. asked Goldman to submit the dispute to a panel of independent firms, Goldman resisted, internal e-mail messages show. In a March 7, 2008, phone call, Mr. Cassano discussed surveying other dealers to gauge prices with Michael Sherwood, Goldman’s vice chairman. At that time, Goldman calculated that A.I.G. owed it $4.6 billion, on top of the $2 billion already paid. A.I.G. contended it only owed an additional $1.2 billion.

Mr. Sherwood said he did not want to ask other firms to value the securities because “it would be ‘embarrassing’ if we brought the market into our disagreement,” according to an e-mail message from Mr. Cassano that described the call.

The Goldman spokesman disputed this account, saying instead that Goldman was willing to consult third parties but could not agree with A.I.G. on the methodology.

Trouble Grows at A.I.G.

By the spring of 2008, A.I.G.’s dispute with Goldman was just one of its many woes. Mr. Cassano was pushed out in March and the company’s defenses against the growing demand for payments faltered. By the end of August 2008, A.I.G. had posted $19.7 billion in cash to its trading partners, including Goldman, according to financial filings.

Over that summer, A.I.G. had tried, unsuccessfully, to cancel its insurance contracts with the trading partners. But Goldman, according to interviews with former A.I.G. executives, would allow that only if it also got to keep the $7 billion it had already received from A.I.G. Goldman wanted to keep the initial insurance payouts and the securities in order to profit from any future rebound.

In addition to offering to cancel its own contracts, Goldman offered to buy all of the insurance A.I.G. had written for several other banks at severely distressed prices, according to three people briefed on the discussions.

Negotiating with Goldman to void the A.I.G. insurance was especially difficult, Federal Reserve Board documents show, because the firm did not own the underlying bonds. As a result, Goldman had little incentive to compromise.

On Aug. 18, 2008, Goldman’s equity research department published an in-depth report on A.I.G. The analysts advised the firm’s clients to avoid the stock because of a “downward spiral which is likely to ensue as more actual cash losses emanate” from the insurer’s financial products unit.

On the matter of whether A.I.G. could unwind its troublesome insurance on mortgage securities at a discount, the Goldman report noted that if a trading partner “is not in a position of weakness, why would it accept anything less than the full amount of protection for which it had paid?”

A.I.G. shares fell 6 percent the day the report was published. Three weeks later, the United States government agreed to pour billions of dollars in taxpayer money into the insurer to keep it from collapsing.

The government would soon settle the yearlong dispute between Goldman and A.I.G., with Goldman receiving full value for its bets. The federal bailout locked in the paper losses of those deals for A.I.G. The prices on many of those securities have since rebounded.

Alan Feuer contributed reporting.

Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010

SC Supreme Court sides with injured migrant worker against tomato farm

By John Monk – jmonk@thestate.com

The S.C. Supreme Court ruled today that a migrant worker who is injured in an accident at owner-supplied housing is entitled to compensation for injuries the worker suffers at that housing.

The unanimous decision involved a foreign worker, Frantz Pierre, who took a $6 an hour job in 2003 with a 400-acre tomato farm in Beaufort County.

Pierre, who was in the U.S. legally and who was recruited to work picking tomatoes, slipped on a wet sidewalk and injured his ankle while at a camp his employee provided for the migrant workers.

Pierre hurt his ankle badly and filed a claim with the S.C. Workers’ Compensation Board. But his employer, Seaside Farms Inc., and its insurance company, American Home Assurance Insurance Co., argued Pierre should get no payment because, among other things, he wasn’t required to live in the workers’ camp.

The Supreme Court blasted the company’s arguments.

“It is clear from the record that Pierre was required, not by contract, but by the nature of his employment, to live on-site near the packing facility as there was no reasonable alternative…,” the high court said.

And, the court found, it was the company’s fault — because of a lack of drainage — that the sidewalk that Pierre slipped on was wet.

source: http://www.thestate.com/breaking/story/1160001.html - February 16, 2010

December 13, 2009

Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/painter/2009-12-13-your-health_N.htm

Geriatrician Daniel Mendelson has many ways to assess the health of his elderly patients, but one of the best, he says, is to watch them walk in from the waiting room.

“A patient who can do that quickly and comfortably is probably doing pretty well,” says the Rochester, N.Y., physician. “But if someone has trouble doing that, they are going to have trouble getting around their own homes.”

And trouble walking is often a sign of worse things to come, say experts in aging. “Looking at somebody’s gait is a keyhole into everything that’s going on with them,” says John Murphy, a geriatrician in Providence and board chairman of the American Geriatrics Society. Falls, bone fractures, heart disease, chronic pain and other health problems become more common as people become less sure on their feet, Murphy says. So do hospitalizations, lost independence and death.

RESILIENT SENIORS: Healthy lifestyle, attitude keep them on track

FALLS AMONG ELDERLY: 47,000 are linked to canes and walkers

One study, published in November in the British Medical Journal, found that the slowest elderly walkers were three times more likely than their faster peers to die of heart disease within five years.

Of course, slow walking is often the result of existing health problems, such as arthritis or clogged blood vessels. But doctors increasingly see impaired walking itself as a disorder. And they are asking: Is it treatable? “In older folks who we know are vulnerable, the question is: Can we pull them back from the brink?” says Jack Guralnik, a researcher at the National Institute on Aging.

His agency has just been given $29.5 million to find out. The grant (part of $5 billion in federal stimulus money awarded to the National Institutes of Health) will pay for two years of the Lifestyles Interventions and Independence for Elders (LIFE) trial.

The study will enroll 1,600 people ages 70 to 89 who, because of health problems and inactivity, could lose the ability to walk a short distance (four blocks) over the next few years. That describes about 40% of people in that age group, says study leader Marco Pahor, director of the University of Florida’s Institute on Aging.

And it could soon describe more: A recent study found that people who were in their 60s in the early 2000s already were more disabled than sixtysomethings surveyed a decade earlier. “It’s scary news,” a direct result of our “increasingly immobile society,” says Cheryl Phillips, a San Francisco geriatrician and president of the geriatrics society.

Health and mobility

In the LIFE study, participants will be put in two groups. One group will come to study centers twice weekly for a program that will include brisk walking, balance and stretching exercises and light weight-training. They’ll also be asked to exercise at home three days a week. The comparison group will attend a general health-education program.

Researchers want to see whether those in the activity program will stay mobile in larger numbers. They also want to see whether increased mobility will translate into fewer falls, heart attacks and strokes and better cognition, Pahor says.

In a pilot study, people in the activity group did remain more mobile, he says. The larger study will start recruiting participants in eight sites nationwide in a few months. 

For now, no one can promise seniors that working hard to stay on their feet will pay off. But rocking chairs are looking less attractive all the time.

WALK, DON’T RUN AT FIRST It’s easy to say “just do it.” But for many elderly people, getting active is hard. So experts say it’s OK to start slowly. “Sometimes you have to do it with a walker; sometimes you have to do it with a friend or a therapist at your side,” says geriatrician Cheryl Phillips. “Sometimes you start with chair exercises.” More information for seniors of all fitness levels is in Exercise & Physical Activity: Your Everyday Guide From the National Institute on Aging (www.nia.nih.gov/HealthInformation/Publications/ExerciseGuide).

OSHA News Release: [11/16/2009]
Contact Name: Diana Petterson
Phone Number: (202) 693-1898
Release Number: 09-1418-NAT

US Department of Labor welcomes GAO’s report on under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses

OSHA finds problems identified in report alarming

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) welcomes the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) report on the under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses and OSHA’s audit process.

The report identifies a number of factors that may contribute to the inaccuracy of employer injury and illness records, as well as problems with the audits that OSHA conducts to ensure their accuracy.

“Accurate injury and illness records are vital to protect workers’ health and safety,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. “They not only enable OSHA to better target its resources and determine the effectiveness of its efforts, accurate numbers are also an important tool that workers and employers can use to identify hazards in their workplaces.”

The report identifies worker intimidation as well as a number of disincentives that may discourage workers and employers from reporting work-related injuries and illnesses. The report also notes widespread reports from occupational health practitioners who were pressured not to record an injury or illness.

Acting Assistant Secretary for OSHA Jordan Barab announced that the agency will move swiftly to implement the recommendations made by the GAO. Additionally, in response to numerous studies of under-reporting and congressional interest, on Oct. 1, OSHA implemented a National Emphasis Program on Recordkeeping. OSHA will send inspectors into worksites across the country to review the occupational injury and illness records prepared by businesses.

“Many of the problems identified in the report are quite alarming, and OSHA will be taking strong enforcement action where we find underreporting,” Solis said.

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, OSHA’s role is to promote safe and healthful working conditions for America’s working men and women by setting and enforcing standards, and providing training, outreach and education. For more information, visit http://www.osha.gov.

Shots at mill echo still

independent mail

By Rick Spruill (Contact)
Friday, September 4, 2009

Photo by Nathan Gray

A monument to those who were killed at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path is located in Dogwood Park in Honea Path.

Contributed photo

Men carry guns outside the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path during the textile strike of 1934.

Photo by Nathan Gray

75 years ago, workers at the Chiquola Mill were shot and killed after going on strike. Today, the mill in Honea Path stands empty.

Contributed photo

Men gather to be deputized in Cater Park during the textile strike of 1934.

Contributed photo

Lois McClain, a spinning room worker at the Chiquola Mill, was photographed after she was shot in her left hand during the textile strike of 1934.

HONEA PATH — The Chiquola Mill in Honea Path, now abandoned, is a shell whose prized hardwood floors and wooden roof beams are gone, leaving the place open to the rain, the sun and the years.

The concrete sidewalks surrounding the 21-acre property are untended and overgrown with weeds, and the bloodstains of 75 years ago have long since been scoured away by time and weather.

The blood flowed from the bodies of Chiquola Mill workers, seven of whom were killed during the shootings on Sept. 6, 1934.

The workers were Claude Cannon, 27, Lee Crawford, 26, Thomas Yarbrough, 54, E.M. “Bill” Knight, Ira Davis, 26, Maxie Peterson, 27, and C.R. Rucker, 39. They were among about 300 union textile workers from Honea Path and Belton who had formed a long line of solidarity around the mill to protest working conditions and wages.

A small part of a historic event known as the General Textile Strike of 1934, when nearly 1 million textile workers left their jobs in protest of working conditions and wages, the Chiquola Mill strike made national news when, around 7:45 p.m., non-union workers and special deputies stationed in and around the mill opened fire on the picket line with pistols and shotguns.

An Anderson Independent story the next day, reported that the “hail of fire from non-union workers and special deputies” killed six men, wounded “a score of others,” and left wives and children “sobbing in agony as they rushed to the sides of their dead.”

A seventh man, who was taken to the Anderson County Hospital (now AnMed Health), later died of his wounds.

Anderson County Sheriff W.A. Clamp was in the midst of the firing, and told the Anderson Independent he felt “lucky to have survived it. I don’t know who shot first. Bullets kicked up around my feet, and they were shooting pistols, rifles and shotguns,” Clamp said. “The firing lasted just a couple of minutes and there really wasn’t time to do much of anything.”

Seventy-five years later, Honea Path Mayor Earl Lollis Meyers says the town still feels the pain of the “Chiquola Incident,” as it is called in oral histories and archives.

“It is a part of our history, and it helped change labor laws,” Meyers said. “But it remains a painful subject.”

Meyers said his grandfather, a lay preacher named E.W. Lollis, helped with the funerals for the seven men, some of whom witnesses said were shot as many as 10 times.

“There were strikes going on all over the South in those days,” Meyers said. “The strike at the Chiquola mill was just one of many.

“My grandfather was a supervisor, known as an overseer, at the mill. I remember him telling us he heard the shots. He took my mother and grandmother and put them on a train to Greenville as soon as he could. He was worried for their safety.”

Meyers said that to this day people argue over who gave the order to fire.

“The event divided families,” Meyers said. “There were some who wanted the union, others who did not. Some believe it was J.D. Beacham who gave the order to fire. Others believe one of the striking workers fired first. But no one really knows.”

Beacham was superintendent of the mill. He was known to have been inside the building when the shootings happened. According to the Anderson Independent report, Beacham, who also was the mayor of Honea Path, “quietly swore in 100 extra officers” to aid the 26 officers and non-union workers guarding the plant the day of the shooting.

Today, a stone monument to the fallen sits in the shade of a large holly tree in Honea Path’s Dogwood Park, just a mile from the mill itself.

Dedicated May 29, 1995, the monument bears the names of the seven men who “died for the rights of the working man,” and references the “30 people wounded” that day in 1934. Placed by unknown hands, there are roses thre, made, ironically, of a textile — silk.

Mayor Meyers, who worked in the textile industry for 27 years, said the events of August and September 1934 “accomplished bringing new labor laws to the whole country. You could work in a mill in those days at any age, for any amount of time. In those days, kids’ education was secondary to working in the mill.”

Meyers said that while the word union still evokes fear and skepticism in the minds of many Southerners, unions served a purpose for textile workers.

“There are good and bad things about unions, but most of the large manufacturing companies up north brought union benefits to the South,” he said. ‘When I started out in the ’50s, they were paying better wages and were doing more for us,” he said. “I think all of this came about, at least in part, because of those hard days in 1934.”