Mr. Ferguson, it's always good to see you.
My questions are around paragraph 5 of your opening remarks, to start with. At the end of the paragraph, it says, “Furthermore, the Department stated that every reasonable effort would be made to achieve settlements through negotiations. However, we found that more claims were either closed by the Department, or ended up in litigation, than were resolved through negotiation.”
Did you receive a response from the department as to why they felt it was their prerogative? How does that look? How does the department just close claims? Wouldn't all claims have to go to litigation or to some form of mediation?