The Complaint indicates she improperly

· Used her position to speed payment of her own workers' compensation case,

· Made improper statements some of which were on an ex parte basis and

· Attempted to hide a hearing from the media in a high-profile workers' compensation case.

· Encouraged lawyers to lie to cover up her actions

We aren’t sure why Ms. Carril/Teague is facing a complaint for trying to get her settlement paid timely. As you can see above, in one of the counts, Carril/Teague is accused of offering to specially schedule a difficult workers' compensation case in exchange for consideration of Carril/Teague's own workers' compensation carpal tunnel case, and attempting to have a private attorney who appeared before her intercede with the Central Management Services adjuster to speed up payment in her case, should it be settled. The attorney she asked is the same attorney who has hundreds of pending carpal tunnel claims against the State arising from the Menard Corrections Center “scandal.”

The CMS adjuster who apparently was asked to speed payment of the Carril/Teague settlement had her own CTS settlement from about five years ago. We assume she may be one of the CMS claims managers who hired a defense expert to create a report finding all Menard CC carpal tunnel syndrome claims were compensable and then published the report when there was no reason to have it drafted, much less published.

This whole messy business brings to light another unconventional and truly questionable “cost-saving” concept used in the Central Management Services’ mismanagement of the State of Illinois’ workers’ compensation program. At some point, someone in CMS came up with a plan to create a six-month or 180-day waiting period following settlements. Basically, when the State settled a claim with one of its own workers, the injured worker has to wait six-months to get their money. Please note we don’t think that concept saves a dime—you simply have to pay the money later, rather than sooner.

While we don’t intend to comment on the ARDC’s complaint, we have to point out this 180-day waiting period isn’t in the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act nor is it in the Rules Governing Practice. It is simply something CMS tries to do with their settlements. To our knowledge, the concept was created randomly by a bureaucrat--they could also just as easily make it a 180-hour period or a five-year waiting period.

What is weird about the waiting period is every claimant attorney in this state goes along with it which again shows the incongruous relationship between our claimant bar and the “cash cow” that is the Central Management Services agency. Basically, the idea may be that if you are getting a bag of taxpayer money for a “non-accident” CTS claim, you have to wait your turn to get it.

Many times this waiting period pushes the payment of the settlement monies into the next state government fiscal year that begins July 1. We don’t feel this waiting period has any true value other than to highlight the eccentric workers’ comp claims management program run by our State that pays more money to Illinois state workers than almost any U.S. corporation pays on a national basis. We have asked all of our readers, if you know a corporation that pays over $133 million each year in workers’ comp benefits nationally, please let us know.

Former Arbitrator Teague is also accused of having improper conversations with two attorneys who worked in 2009-10 for the workers' compensation defense firm Hennessey and Roach.

KCBA Blog

7-19-2011; The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission files a four-count disciplinary complaint was filed against former Arbitrator Jennifer Carril, formerly Teague. She has already...