By Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Poughkeepsie Journal
September 14, 2008

Annette Mooney was doing her job in December 2002 when, as an aide at a group home for the disabled, she chased a client who had run into traffic, slipped on ice and damaged several discs in her spine.

At that moment, Mooney, now 42, became an injured worker at the mercy of a compensation system some said moves at a notoriously glacial and frustrating pace. Just as significant, however, is the fact her case was handled by a company that officials of the state Workers' Compensation Board say had the worst record of payment among those that administered group self-insurance funds like the one that covered Mooney: Compensation Risk Managers LLC of Poughkeepsie, or CRM.

Over the next year, Mooney would be unable to work, fall behind on payments for her house and vehicle - losing both - and receive no compensation at all for the two jobs she could no longer work.

"I lived in my house for 16 years," said Mooney, of Fredonia in western New York's Chatauqua County. "I lost my truck; I lost my house. I lost a lot because of their refusal to pay right away. I was very devastated."

Mooney blames CRM, a point on which the company firmly disagrees.

CRM instead blamed a series of circumstances that raised "red flags" and caused the company to "controvert" her claim - in short, to fight it.

Conflicting reports
For one, CRM officials said, there were two conflicting descriptions of the accident, making it impossible to determine "the mechanism of injury." (In one, she was hurt when she fell; in the other, she was hurt when she helped the resident get up.) For another, Mooney didn't report the accident for a month - after being placed on administrative leave - and her employer did not report it for three months, they said.

The rest of the delay in payment, CRM said, was related to the Workers' Compensation system itself, under which a judge schedules hearings, reviews evidence and, over the course of months, renders a decision.

"It's not like we made up the conflict to drag this case on," said Eric Egelund, CRM's vice president of trust relations. "It's part of the process."

The decision, in January 2004, went in Mooney's favor - though she says her problems weren't over. Afterward, checks from CRM often came late, a violation for which the company was fined more than any other fund manager in the state. CRM's Egelund said records indicate Mooney was always paid on time.

In charges filed against CRM by the state in April, Mooney's case was one of 19 listed as among "the most egregious examples" of claims for which CRM did not set aside adequate money, causing the fund's deficits to suddenly balloon.

Egelund said in response the amount reserved "would have no impact on what she would have been paid."