How to Cut COLOSSUS Down to Size

If you have handled "minor impact tissue injury" (MIST) cases, you
may have encountered a computerized evaluation tool that many
insurance companies use to aid in their conduct of the case.

These tools have been around since the early 1990s and the uses and
applications of these tools have left many angry people in their wake.
One of the common ones is called COLOSSUS. Originally developed in
Australia, the program is now owned and licensed by the Computer Sciences
Corporation http://www.csc.com, a California corporation.

The anger that has been generated by the uses and applications of tools
like COLOSSUS has been expressed in many websites by several law firms
handling these cases. Therefore, there is a real challenge to find
practical data that can advance your client-representation goals
because the emotion generated by these cases tends to be fresh and raw
and the emotion is reflected in the adjectives and adverbs used
on these websites. In your analysis of these materials for your cases,
do not forget that the ethical obligation of zealous representation
can sometimes drive attorneys to frame issues and data in polemical
ways that make information distillation difficult.

If you suspect a computerized evaluation tool is in use
by an insurance company involved in your case, you will need 
some basic data about the tool in context, specific data
about the major tool you are likely to face, and some general
questions about artificial-intelligence tools that will apply to
any computerized case-evaluation tools. 

Basic Data Sources

There are two sources that will give you the basic data you need to
frame your questions about COLOSSUS or some other insurance-case
management tool. One comes from the Association of Trial Lawyers of
America (ATLA) and one came from a Florida law firm. (When I tried
to use direct citations to Computer Sciences Corporation web pages
other than its home page, I found many broken links or pages that
were not available.)

ATLA's contribution here is a two-page article that appeared in the
Consumer Attorneys of California Forum in the July/August 2001 issue,
pages 10-11. It was written by Roselyn Bonanti and David Ratcliff, from
the State Affairs Office of ATLA. The article provides basic data about
COLOSSUS, the scope of its use, and a list of insurance companies that
use the program and when each one started using it.

The other helpful document that I would absolutely command you to get
if you were handling one of these cases is a document by a Florida
attorney, William F. Merlin, Jr., called "Collision Course with the
COLOSSUS Program: How to Deal with It," available on his website at
http://www.insurance-law.com/pdfs/Colossus/Whatweknow.pdf. (You will need
the Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the document, since the document
is online in the Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). You can
download the Adobe Acrobat Reader free of charge at
http://www.adobe.com .) The document provides you with vaulable guidance,
lists of questions to ask, factors to consider, elements of damages, and
other data really helpful in handling the computer program.

How to Question the Artificial Intelligence Tool

Artificial intelligence tools like computerized claim-handling
systems have two major components--the rules and the data set.

The rules consist of programmed decisions and data input and
output--the conceptual plumbing of the system. It is
reminiscent of the law school and bar-examination experience
of burning the basic checklists for crimes, contracts, and
torts into our brains. Those checklists would be the "rules"
you would use if you were to create an artificial intelligence
system to take the bar examination.

The data set consists of the information the system gathers
and manipulates. The data may come from a number of sources--
both credible and faulty. Data are influenced by interactions
with other data and with human custodians.

With both the rules and the data set in mind, here are a few
questions you should either ask or discover about the computerized
claim-handling systems you encounter:
 
What are the sources for the rules?
Does the program apply the rules accurately?
What data are used by the program?
What are the sources of those data?
How often are the data changed or updated?
How often are the data checked or verified for accuracy or integrity?

The answers to these questions will provide leads for your investigation
of how computerized claim-handling systems like COLOSSUS affected your
client's interest.