BRIEFCASE.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

Tenet settlement OK'd by L.A. judge

A proposed settlement between Tenet Healthcare Corp. and uninsured patients who received care at Tenet facilities nationwide was approved by a Los Angeles judge, an attorney said Tuesday.

``We are pleased with the outcome of this case and feel that the settlement is an important step toward fair pricing for all patients,'' said attorney Steve Berman, who represented the plaintiffs.

Tenet spokesman Steven Campanini said the next step in the settlement process is for the other eight states, besides California, that are involved in the litigation to decide whether they approve of the agreement.

California is the lead district in the suits, but the other states - Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas - have the right to appeal, he said.

Tenet has made no admission of wrongdoing in settling the case.

Former WorldCom exec sentenced

NEW YORK - The former director of general accounting at WorldCom was sentenced Tuesday to one year and one day in prison for his role in the company's record $11 billion fraud.

The sentence for Buford ``Buddy'' Yates, 49, came nearly three years after he pleaded guilty to helping WorldCom overstate its earnings from 2000 to 2002 in a scandal that bankrupted the telecom company.

Yates pleaded guilty to fraud in October 2002, telling a judge he was instructed by superiors to make adjustments to company books that had ``no justification'' and were designed to meet Wall Street expectations.

The judge said Yates had been ``perhaps the least useful'' of all the cooperators with the government's case. She said Yates appeared to have been motivated by ``a reluctance to upset the apple cart'' at the company.

The judge also imposed a $5,000 fine and ordered Yates to report to federal prison Oct. 10.

Productivity up, labor costs slow

WASHINGTON - Productivity growth turned in a solid performance in the spring while the pressure on labor costs eased significantly, the government reported Tuesday.

The Labor Department said productivity - output per hour of work - rose at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the second quarter. That was down from a 3.2 percent gain in the first three months of the year but remained high enough to guarantee continued increases in living standards, analysts said.

In good news for inflation, unit labor costs slowed to an annual increase of just 1.3 percent in the April-June quarter, substantially below the increases of the previous nine months that had raised fears of rising cost pressures.

While workers benefit from higher wages, the Federal Reserve closely watches the path of labor costs for early warning signs of mounting wage pressures that could foster inflation.

Fannie Mae again misses deadline

WASHINGTON - Embattled mortgage giant Fannie Mae said Tuesday that it likely will not complete the reworking of its accounting, ordered by federal regulators, before the second half of next year and disclosed that it has been discussing the matter with the New York Stock Exchange, where its stock trades.

The government-sponsored company, which finances one of every five home loans in the United States, again missed a regulatory deadline for filing a financial report, this time for the second quarter.

Federal regulators accused Fannie Mae last fall of serious accounting problems and earnings manipulation to meet Wall Street targets, and the Securities and Exchange Commission in December ordered the company to restate earnings back to 2001.