Litigation

A Spooner Full Of Burnt Sugar From NSSTA Board

By John Darer

One of the tricky aspects of making creme caramel is caramelizing the sugar. Take your eye off the ball for a moment and the deliciously sweet syrup turns into an icky mass that is as bad as stale coffee. This is what appears to have happened with the appointment of Forge Consulting partner Spooner Phillips to an NSSTA committee post.

This author opines that the Spooner Phillips appointment was entirely inappropriate. Phillips' record is forever stained in connection with his Department of Justice Declaration on March 3, 2005  in collusion with his Forge Consulting partners, John T. Bair of Buffalo New York  and Charles Schell of Hartwell, GA, and is a moral embarassment to the National Structured Settlement Trade Association as well as a disgrace to the profession, in this author's opinion. A person in charge of membership should have a pristine record which Phillips clearly does not. The person in charge of membership should set standards not be an example of abuse.

The appointment of Spooner Phillips in a leadership role by NSSTA can only be seen as the NSSTA sticking out its middle finger to the United States Department of Justice, by giving its tacit approval to the practice where certain NSSTA members signed a declaration under penalty of perjury attesting to providing substantial services to or on behalf of defendants while at the same time soliciting tort victims and their attorneys as being plaintiff exclusive. The two are mutually exclusive. They cannot both be true at the same time!

The United States Department of Justice requirements and purpose are not ambiguous (see USDOJ Leaves No Doubt in Minimum Requirements For Annuity Brokers  September 13, 2007). Principle VI of the NSSTA "Code of Ethics" states "a (sic) NSSTA member should comply with all material federal and state laws and regulations applicable to the structured settlement services that are provided".

The circumstances surrounding the Phillips appointment are beginning to come clear. Apparently Spooner Phillips was unilaterally named chair of the NSSTA Political Action Committee ("NSSTAPAC") by an over eager and myopic  NSSTA Board member which not surprisingly caused a bit of an uproar. The membership committee position was open and after a "thorough" cluster "%^&" of a review they "Phillipsed in" the position.

Full post as published by Structured Settlements 4Real on November 07, 2008 (boomark / email).