Brown, Hamilton, Houck & Pfeffer
(a division of National Recovery Services, Inc.)
Since 1983

Chicago, IL                                                                                                                                                                                                        Sherwood, WI 
Fairbanks, AK                                                                                                                                                                                                      St. Paul, MN
Klamath Falls, OR                                                                                                                                                                            Wisconsin Rapids, WI

 

Processing Refund Claims

A successful claim requires an accurately completed, document-supported and timely submission of a filing.  Further, if those processing claims for the Court ask for additional requests or documentation, that information must be timely responded to.

The time-lapse between  filing,  and when claims are paid out, can be substantial.  There are few companies that have a system in place to monitor correspondence with the Court, or carry a receivable whose validity, principal amount, and maturity are unknown.

As an illustration, in a recent case in commercial carpeting, the claims administrator mailed out approximately 15,000 claim forms to companies which had purchased products believed to fall within the eligible terms of settlement.  Of those 15,000, approximately 5,700 claims were filed, and of those 5,700, approximately 2,900 were paid - less that 1 in 5.  100% of the claims processed, filed and monitored by us were paid.

Our systemic process is designed to:  1) Develop a supportable claim amount from existing or replicated invoices or cancelled drafts, or by using a variety of alternate calculations of derivation that the courts have accepted in the past; 2) File the claim via certified mail; 3) Determine that in fact the claim was received and align our file numbers to coincide with those of the administrator; 4) Determine if the administrators are in need of further clarification / substantiation; 5)  Determine the approved amount of each claim;  6)  Determine what the total allowed claims are estimated to be; 7) From that information, calculate the likely refund to be received by each of our client firms, and; 8) Determine when the completed results will be presented to the court for approval, which gives us an indication of when the refunds will be paid.

The above methodology provides solution to the problems of carrying receivables (as earlier) for many months whose validity, principal amount, and maturity may not otherwise be known or determined.