Insurers and self-insured employers paid almost $25.7 million for "attorney salaries and other costs of legal services" for Oregon workers' compensation in calendar year 1994. These costs exclude fees paid to claimants' attorneys and are often called defense costs. They include not only fees paid to defend the insurer against claims or awards believed to be unwarranted, but also fees paid to represent the insurer in responsibility disputes (where there may be no direct impact on the claimant) and for advising or representing the insurer in activities outside of litigation, such as negotiating a Claim Disposition Agreement (CDA).

Table 1 summarizes these costs. The bottom row of this table depicts the cost breakdown by type of cost: almost 63 percent of all costs were for retained counsel, compared to 62 percent in 1993.

For each insurer classification, information on share of costs, number of cases, attorney in-house staff, in-house costs as a percentage of total costs, and 1993-1994 cost changes are given in Table 2. SAIF's share of all costs remained at 25 percent, while the shares of private insurers and self-insured employers decreased and increased, respectively, by approximately 3 percentage points (column 1). The number of claims (column 2) indicates the number of claims that had litigation during the year. The total number of "claims" has fallen each year since 1990. The number of in-house attorney staff (full-time equivalent, or FTE) and the percentage of all costs that are comprised of salaries to legal staff and other in-house costs are given in columns 3 and 4. SAIF continued to rely more heavily on in-house staff than did private insurers and self-insured employers. Finally, column 5 gives the percentage change in total costs, from 1993 to 1994, for each insurer classification. Only self-insured employers showed a cost increase in 1994.

| DCBS Public Home Page | IMD Home Page | Site Search Engine |