Litigation

The open meetings of the National Structured Settlement Trade Association (NSSTA) in La Jolla should be juicy this year.

1. NSSTA members are likely to ask the current board of directors what have they done to deal with the factoring issues that many of them ran on for the past year's board. Three currently seated NSSTA board members promised that they were going to do something in their campaign speeches in Toronto. What have they done? Specifically, incoming President Chris Diamantis must be asked what has been done over the past year and to spell out NSSTA's plans for dealing with the problem with this year's Board and committees.
2. An inquest needs to be held into the  NY Judicial Institute scandal. Perhaps unbeknown to the majority of NSSTA members,  resources of NSSTA were used in September 2006, to supply Bronx New York Supreme Court Judge, Paul Victor, with information and opinion about the Halpern Group 130X product for use in a New York Judicial Institute presentation in Fall 2006. The New York Judicial Institute materials present Halpern in an unfair  way that  would be interpreted by this author (and most people in this author's opinion) to be defamatory. Certain NSSTA members, purportedly including a current Board member,  have obtained and used this defamatory material in an attempt to compete with Halpern, or to educate others on how to compete with Halpern. NSSTA members must understand that THEIR dues money paid the NSSTA lawyers to write two letters and send material to Judge Victor! The NSSTA Board has a non delegable duty to represent the interests of its members and I, for one, would like to know, from the surviving members of the 2006-2007 Board, how their actions served the best interest of the trade association and its members? Members should demand  to see the minutes of the Board meeting in which the decision was made to commit NSSTA resources and who voted for it? Transparency in governance is sorely needed here.
3. What is being done to provide an enforcement mechanism for NSSTA bylaws and code of conduct and when will it be in place?

These topics, however unpleasant, must be addressed.