A TOTAL of 862 current and former Spokane County employees are receiving checks totaling $227,805 following the settlement of a lawsuit between Council 2 and Spokane County.

The amounts paid to each member vary widely, from $3,600 to less than a dollar.

The dispute involved a cash payment by Standard Insurance Company to Spokane County. A portion of that money should have been passed on to County employees, Council 2 argued, but was not.

Standard provided basic life insurance to Council 2 members, paid for by the County. If union members wanted additional coverage, they were offered the option of buying supplemental life insurance and paying the premiums for this extra coverage themselves.

In 1997 Oregon-based Standard decided to change from being a not-for-profit mutual fund insurance company to a for-profit stock-issuing company. When it demutualized, Standard issued shares or cash to its customers. Counties such as Spokane County were paid the cash equivalent of the shares.

As a result, an amount of about $1.3 million was paid to Spokane County.

Council 2 representatives argued that a large portion of that money should have gone to employees who had taken out their own supplemental insurance policies and had paid the premiums on the policies themselves. But, they added, the County did not pass on the money to those members.

“In many other counties in which the same situation had arisen, the money had been paid to the insured people themselves,” says Marty Garfinkel, of the Seattle law firm Schroeter Goldmark Bender, who represented Council 2 in the case. “But in this case, Spokane County insisted it was all their money.”

When it first became aware of the situation, Council 2 attempted to persuade the County to reach a compromise solution. When the County refused to negotiate, a lawsuit was filed in Spokane County Superior Court with Council 2 and Spokane staff representative Gordon Smith as the named plaintiff representing all Council-2 represented employees.

The suit was settled and the money is to be divided among the 862 Council 2 members. The cash paid to each member depends on the amount of insurance premiums paid by the member over a six-year period from January 1, 1992 through December 31, 1997. It is estimated that each recipient will receive 50.2 percent of the total premiums he or she paid during the six-year period involved.

“Council 2 and the County have sent letters to the members advising them of the settlement and requiring that certain forms be completed and returned,” Garfinkel says. “Once they do that, they will be sent the money owed to them.”