Crawford & Company has purchased e-Triage, an international technology company whose products Crawford has been using in its workers' compensation claims-handling program.

Appraisal is a tool widely-used to settle disputes involving the value of a loss, and it has gained popularity over the past decade as a relatively quick, supposedly inexpensive, and substantially final method of determining damages.

One does not hear much about a hidden loss of Katrina.

Larger organizations worldwide are more likely to have an avian flu response plan in place, although only about 3.3 percent of those with sales of $5-to-$10 billion have a plan, an underwriters' organ