Claimants

Misplacing $200,000 is hard. Misplacing it and not realizing it's lost is harder.But Marylanders have apparently accomplished both feats, as evidenced by payouts from the state's unclaimed property office.Last year the office reunited one "orphan" account of $210,368 and another of $199,768 with their apparently ignorant owners. State officials distributed a total of more than $7 million in unclaimed funds to nearly 12,000 people last year.Now they want to do it again. Through advertisements and other means, the Maryland officials are trying to match 17,000 people and businesses with millions of dollars in unclaimed money, including dormant savings accounts, uncollected paychecks, misplaced stocks and bonds, and forgotten safe-deposit boxes.

Porter Hayden Co., which sold and installed asbestos insulation, was given final approval yesterday to create a trust to pay claims from tens of thousands of people who said they were sickened by asbestos products, the Baltimore company's law firm said yesterday. The asbestos trust is part of a reorganization plan that essentially says the trust will own Porter Hayden, which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since 2002. Numerous bankruptcy cases involving companies involved in asbestos products have been settled in similar fashion.

WASHINGTON -- The Social Security Administration spends $20 million a year to make sure lawyers get the fees that clients owe them for helping win Social Security disability benefits.But now the Clinton administration and Congress are moving to end the practice even though its defenders say lawyers will be less likely to take disability cases -- thus denying claimants needed legal services -- if they have to collect fees on their own."That's really going to make it difficult to get lawyers to take cases," said Joseph Manes, a lobbyist with the Bazelon Mental Health Law Center in Washington.

PHILADELPHIA -- The number of citizens who want dibs on Norman Johnston's $40,000 reward seems to be growing faster than the escaped killer's whiskers did during his 19 days on the run. But no one, it seems, thought to call the appropriate tip lines to get a code that would make him or her eligible for the cash. So it might make one wonder: If a killer is on your doorstep knocking over flower pots, whom do you call first? Should you call Crime Stoppers first to get your code?

Unemployed Maryland residents who exhausted their regular 26 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits on or after March 1, 1991, will be notified by mail of their eligibility for 13 weeks of federal Emergency Unemployment Insurance Compensation.Information and application packages will be forwarded to all potential claimants beginning yesterday.To be eligible for the new federal benefits, claimants must complete and return to the Department of Economic and Employment Development application forms sent to them.

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 1991, which increasedunemployment benefits for claimants in Maryland, also changed the benefit entitlements and eligibility requirements for former service members.Benefits are now increased to 26 weeks, and the five-week waiting period before former service members could collect benefits has been eliminated. This affects former service members for the periodof unemployment starting Nov. 17, 1991.There are no retroactive benefits payable for weeks prior to thisdate.

Porter Hayden Co., which sold and installed asbestos insulation, was given final approval yesterday to create a trust to pay claims from tens of thousands of people who said they were sickened by asbestos products, the Baltimore company's law firm said yesterday. The asbestos trust is part of a reorganization plan that essentially says the trust will own Porter Hayden, which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since 2002. Numerous bankruptcy cases involving companies involved in asbestos products have been settled in similar fashion.

CHICAGO -- The Good Hands People are battling in court again, this time defending their right to send materials such as a flier called "Do I Need An Attorney?" to non-Allstate customers who have been injured by Allstate policyholders.Northbrook, Ill.-based Allstate Corp., which has been sending the information since 1995, says it is required by law to settle claims quickly and fairly, and that it is within its rights to let claimants know that they do not need a lawyer to handle a claim.Two state attorneys general see it differently, as do five people who took Allstate's advice and later felt cheated by the amounts they received.

NEW YORK -- A federal appeals court overturned lat yesterday the compensation plan for the massive Johns-Manville Corp. settlement trust, which was created in 1988 to pay thousands of asbestos disease claimants."

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 1991, which increasedunemployment benefits for claimants in Maryland, also changed the benefit entitlements and eligibility requirements for ex-service members.Benefits are now increased to 26 weeks, and the five-week waiting period before ex-service members could collect benefits has been eliminated. This affects those ex-service members for the period of unemployment starting Nov. 17, 1991.The first category of changes applies to ex-service members who filed claims effective Nov. 24, 1990, or later, exhausted their benefits, or who are still unemployed.

CHICAGO -- The Good Hands People are battling in court again, this time defending their right to send materials such as a flier called "Do I Need An Attorney?" to non-Allstate customers who have been injured by Allstate policyholders.Northbrook, Ill.-based Allstate Corp., which has been sending the information since 1995, says it is required by law to settle claims quickly and fairly, and that it is within its rights to let claimants know that they do not need a lawyer to handle a claim.Two state attorneys general see it differently, as do five people who took Allstate's advice and later felt cheated by the amounts they received.

Dow Corning Corp. and lawyers for women claiming injury from silicone breast implants agreed yesterday to a $3.2 billion settlement, a long-awaited step toward ending one of the most heated disputes in American corporate history.The agreement, which if accepted would end a nearly 10-year legal battle, would allow women seeking damages because of implants to receive money as early as next year.It would enable Dow Corning, a joint venture of Dow Chemical Co. and Corning Inc., to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which Dow Corning entered for protection from as many as 19,000 implant-damage suits.

ADVICE TO THOSE who viewed the recent tobacco deal as a settlement in the making and are waiting for the signing ceremony: Consider asbestos and exhale.In 1973, a federal court in Texas held that workers who had been injured by exposure to asbestos could sue asbestos manufacturers to collect compensation for their losses. So began a saga of almost a quarter-century of workers' attempts to recover damages for medical care, disability and other less easily quantifiable losses.Hundreds of thousands of claims would be filed against scores of companies in industries ranging from shipbuilding to oil refining to auto brake manufacturing.

HAVE YOU FILED for an arbitration hearing because a stockbroker did you wrong? Big losers can easily find lawyers to help, but not those who've been stripped of a "mere" $25,000 or less.That could be half your savings, yet most lawyers say it's too small a case. Even if they win, they can't charge enough, after expenses, to make the effort worth their while.So investors with small claims have to arbitrate alone. Sometimes you win, so you should always try.But without a lawyer, your chances are greatly reduced, says Richard Ryder, editor of the Securities Arbitration Commentator in Maplewood, N.J., which tracks arbitration awards.

WASHINGTON -- The Social Security Administration spends $20 million a year to make sure lawyers get the fees that clients owe them for helping win Social Security disability benefits.But now the Clinton administration and Congress are moving to end the practice even though its defenders say lawyers will be less likely to take disability cases -- thus denying claimants needed legal services -- if they have to collect fees on their own."That's really going to make it difficult to get lawyers to take cases," said Joseph Manes, a lobbyist with the Bazelon Mental Health Law Center in Washington.

Misplacing $200,000 is hard. Misplacing it and not realizing it's lost is harder.But Marylanders have apparently accomplished both feats, as evidenced by payouts from the state's unclaimed property office.Last year the office reunited one "orphan" account of $210,368 and another of $199,768 with their apparently ignorant owners. State officials distributed a total of more than $7 million in unclaimed funds to nearly 12,000 people last year.Now they want to do it again. Through advertisements and other means, the Maryland officials are trying to match 17,000 people and businesses with millions of dollars in unclaimed money, including dormant savings accounts, uncollected paychecks, misplaced stocks and bonds, and forgotten safe-deposit boxes.

ADVICE TO THOSE who viewed the recent tobacco deal as a settlement in the making and are waiting for the signing ceremony: Consider asbestos and exhale.In 1973, a federal court in Texas held that workers who had been injured by exposure to asbestos could sue asbestos manufacturers to collect compensation for their losses. So began a saga of almost a quarter-century of workers' attempts to recover damages for medical care, disability and other less easily quantifiable losses.Hundreds of thousands of claims would be filed against scores of companies in industries ranging from shipbuilding to oil refining to auto brake manufacturing.

LONDON -- Prime Minister John Major laid out his Conservative agenda for the 1990s yesterday, promising a mixture of old and new policies but giving no clue as to when he will call the next general election.His confidence and clarity won him a standing ovation from the Conservative Party faithful at the end of a week of confusion over abandonment of the unpopular poll tax, the flagship of Margaret Thatcher's last term as prime minister.Mr. Major defended the decision to replace the poll tax with a combination property-and-people levy.

WASHINGTON -- Last April, Vivian Walch, a former token clerk for the New York subway system, applied for Social Security disability payments, saying a bad back had forced her to retire early.Seven months later -- after being turned down and asking for reconsideration of the decision -- Ms. Walch received a letter that included someone else's Social Security number and denied her benefits. Apparently referring to another person, the letter concluded that a "breathing problem" should not prevent Ms. Walch from doing her job as a "nursing supervisor."

Twenty-four county shoppers walked out of the Glen Burnie Mall Saturday a little richer than when they walked in.The two dozen men and women discovered a total of $2,000 in a computer search for unclaimed funds or valuables held by the state comptroller's office.The largest claim that turned up was $494, said Marvin A. Bond, spokesman for State Comptroller Louis Goldstein. The smallest was $59, and the oldest was an unclaimed 1979 Mass Transit Administration paycheck."Unclaimed money" comes from forgotten bank accounts, security deposits and insurance benefits, along with stocks and money from utilities companies.