Workers Comp Attorney Wants Retraction

Jodi Bjornson, the general counsel for the Workforce Safety and Insurance Agency, has hired an attorney, Lawrence King, who is demanding a formal retraction from Cynthia Feland, a Burleigh County assistant state's attorney.

Feland's motion to dismiss a conspiracy charge against Sandy Blunt, the chief executive officer of Workforce Safety and Insurance, and Romi Leingang, director of the agency's special investigations unit, implied Bjornson changed her testimony in the case, King said Tuesday in a letter to Feland.

"As a result, Ms. Bjornson's veracity and integrity are being publicly questioned," King said in the letter. "Your statements have damaged the personal and professional reputation of a respected member of this community and of the bar of this state."

Feland's boss, Richard Riha, the Burleigh County state's attorney, said his office "has never taken the position that Ms. Bjornson 'changed her story.'"

"It is unfortunate that others may be mischaracterizing (Bjornson's) statements as a change in testimony," Riha said in his own letter to King. "However, we have neither control over how the public perceives Ms. Bjornson's statements nor how the media reports it."

Riha's statement that Bjornson didn't change her story is helpful, but the language of the dismissal motion still is unacceptable, King said. He said he would check again with Riha and review Bjornson's legal options with his client.

Feland's Oct. 15 interview with Bjornson, a week before Blunt and Leingang were scheduled to be arraigned, was a factor in Feland's decision to drop the charge against them. Bjornson requested and got immunity from criminal prosecution for her testimony.

Blunt and Leingang had been accused of conspiring to use confidential driver's license photos from the Department of Transportation as part of an investigation. The charge carried a maximum punishment of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

In the deposition, Feland's dismissal motion said, "Bjornson acknowledged that on Feb. 21, 2006, Leingang sought counsel to determine if she could legally use the DOT photos. Bjornson recalled that she had reviewed the law pertaining to open records, and based on a review of that law, had advised that the photos were not confidential."

Feland's motion said the advice was mistaken, and concluded that Leingang and Blunt should not be prosecuted for relying on it.

King said Feland's description of Bjornson's testimony was false.

In both the Oct. 15 interview and an earlier deposition on April 17, Bjornson made clear she didn't remember Leingang asking her for legal advice about the photos, King said. Instead, Bjornson deferred to Leingang, who said she did remember it.

When Bjornson, in her Oct. 15 interview, mentioned reviewing the state's open-records law, she was also answering a question she had not been asked before, King said.

"As you are well aware, Ms. Bjornson has consistently indicated to you that she has no independent recollection of a conversation regarding legal advice on this issue," King's letter said. "The only difference was in the October deposition," it said, in which Feland "asked more detailed questions."

Both Bjornson and Leingang were being asked to recall events that happened more than a year before. In mid-February 2006, a flurry of activity at WSI's Bismarck headquarters was touched off by an outside e-mail to agency workers that included salary information for all of them.

The driver's license photos were used in an unsuccessful attempt to discover the e-mailer's identity.

Bjornson, in her Oct. 15 interview, said the e-mail "was not even a blip on my radar, this particular occurrence. In the big scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal to me ... This was pretty small in my mind."

What she remembered about the e-mail's arrival was Blunt's reaction, Bjornson said.

"Mr. Blunt was very angry. He was very agitated. And that's what sticks out in my memory the most, was the emotion of the situation," she said.