Litigation

The Executive Director of Forge Consulting subsidiary The Settlement Services Group (TSSG) has produced the first in a series of posts about structured settlement securitizations on the S2KM blog. That is only part of the story.

What is the most interesting is Hindert's selection of tags. Tagging is a way of organizing and/or classifying information on the Internet. Sometimes it?s done by just one person (the content creator, in this case Patrick Hindert), and other times it can be done by a community (social tagging.), such as for example if you tag a person's name on an old photo posted on Facebook.

Hindert has tagged the following categories in relation to the structured settlement securitization post, among others

• Settlement Consulting
• Settlement Planning
• Structured Settlement Transaction Diagram
• Structured Settlement Annuity
• Settlement Planners
• Henderson v Sciateco
• Periodic Payment Judgments

Hindert's tagging raises the obvious quesion which is "Are settlement consultants and settlement planners getting involved with structured settlement securitizations in any way?" That includes as investors or directly, or indirectly, placing their clients into structured settlement securities/securitizations in private or registered securities transactions?  Why else would HIndert tag these key words? TSSG even announces its expertise in structured settlement transfers on its website?

The tag for Henderson v Sciateco is most interesting in terms of relevance.The case refers to the recent California appellate court decision which held that public policy supports state court approved factoring transactions. Even those that Hindert cites as experts In his previous post about the NASP Annual Meeting state that IRC 5891 does not contain a clear statement of public policy about factoring, even though one of them referred to examples of IRC 5891 legislative history that contradict any claim that public policy is against structured settlement factoring.

Is it possible that Hindert is hatching a scheme for "industry growth" that contemplates settlement planners and settlement consultants using structured settlement securities to finance the long term financial obligations to their clients in lieu of or in addition to annuities?  Frankly, and I emphasize that this is my personal opinion, I don't find this to be far fetched at all.

Stay tuned!