CNA Insurance Class Action Law Suit
ICS Members may or may not be aware of a recent class action settlement against CNA Insurance. Please review the information below to determine if you need to take action:
Background
Dr. Dale Fischer, D.C. on behalf of himself and other class members, filed a class action against CNA Insurance. The case alleged that CNA took improper discounts on payments to preferred providers who treated worker’s compensation patients because CNA did not live up to its part of the bargain as there were no financial incentives to motivate Illinois workers’ compensation claimants to seek treatment from the preferred providers. CNA has now entered into a proposed settlement that would apply to eligible class members.
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Who Is Eligible?
Licensed health care providers who submitted bills to CNA from Feb. 15, 1995, through Feb. 26, 2010, in Illinois worker’s compensation cases and received less than the amount claimed due to PPO discounts taken by CNA Insurance. If you treated CNA-insured patients for work injuries and you received an official notice about the settlement, you are probably in the class.
What Are the Options for Eligible Class Members?
There are 3 options:
1. Stay in the class and participate in the settlement.
If providers choose this option, they will not have to take any individual action to obtain a recovery, but they will be bound by the settlement (i.e., they cannot get any more than they recover under the class action). If providers do nothing, they will remain in the class and be bound by the settlement, but to get settlement money they must also file a claim. Note that providers who take no action will receive no payment and will not be able to bring their own cases against CNA.
To stay in the class and participate in the settlement, providers must file a claim form postmarked no later than June 14, 2010, in accordance with the directions in the settlement notice (also available at www.pposettlements.com). Under the settlement, CNA Insurance has agreed to pay members for discounts taken for the period from 1995 – 2010, up to a total of $4,250,000. To fill out the claim form, providers will have to calculate total amounts of discounts taken by CNA Insurance in worker’s compensation cases for that period. As in any class action, if the total amount claimed under the settlement exceeds the $4,250,000 contributed by CNA, each class member provider’s share will be prorated, so it is not possible to know at this time what the total amount of any doctor’s recovery would be.
2. Request to be excluded from the class.
Providers who do so will not be bound by the class action settlement, but they will not receive payment from the settlement and would have to file their own individual lawsuits to recover money from CNA Insurance. To opt-out of the class, doctors must send written notice that is actually received by April 14, 2010, in accordance with the instructions on the settlement notice (available at www.pposettlements.com).
3. Remain in the class but file objections or comments by April 14, 2010.
This is a somewhat complicated process that is detailed in the settlement notice at www.pposettlements.com. It requires, among other things, the filing of a written objection with the St. Clair County Circuit Court, together with a written brief stating specific reasons for each objection with legal and factual support.
Most ICS members will probably prefer to remain in the class, because they will opt to take whatever they can recover, rather than having to file their own lawsuits against CNA Insurance or getting nothing.
Additional information can be obtained from class counsel at: Classaction@lakinchapman.com. Refer to the Fischer case No. 05-L-0103.
