Hopefully as an investor, you have a chance to read books during the summer and some not related to your work. Once in a while it is good to read stories about injustice because you can relate the reasons to other evaluations you do. A good example is the book The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, published by Public Affairs, NY, 2018. The book is written by 2 lawyers about wrongful convictions in the legal system, focusing on the coroner’s office in Mississippi. If you are similar to me, the only time you have paid attention to a coroner is through TV shows such as Quincy and CSI – Las Vegas which are and still are popular viewing.

Given that many of think about the coroners office as part science and part medicine or following the facts, the book paints a different story of what was normal. When something is part science and part medicine, many different theories and ideas come into the normal operating procedure and may help find the guilty party guilty. However, some of the procedures helped convict innocent people, because there was a need to find someone guilty and the evidence pointed to one person or another. What will seal the deal?

An issue in the courts, we as a society tend to give people who have expert evidence a higher standing, particularly if they have a degree. We tend to place having a degree as equal to the best degrees in study, but should they be? What about the quality of their work, if someone claims to have worked on thousands of cases, how much time did they put into each case? If they are the go to expert for authorities, when do they disagree? how often? what is the bias? Are there patterns that develop that need to be questioned?

In the book, the authors focus on the state of Mississippi, for many years anyone over 21 could be a coroner and were. People who could not read or write and signed the form with an X were coroners. It is not surprising outside of natural death, underdetermined reasons showed up on the death certificate. That is ok under normal circumstances, except what happens when insurance money is desired or criminal cases rest on the coroner’s report? In the official headings, you would find a state coroner listed in the directory, but digging deeper you would find a very underfunded department. You would also find the fees for being a coroner low which ensures most people with medical degrees stay away from being coroner. What you may expect is not necessarily what you receive in reality.

In the book, the coroner’s department in Mississippi has changed, it is now being funded properly and thankfully the use of DNA evidence helps ensure fewer innocent people are found guilty but the damage was done.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as investors you have an opinion of a stock and put money into buying the stock. Invariably someone will have a different opinion, why do you hold it? In your research you find a number of very good reasons to buy and good reasons not to buy. Investing is both a balancing act and narrowing down the list of stocks to buy. We only know perfect information looking back, we do not know what will happen in the future. The issue is when you examine the reasons to buy, how solid are they? what assumptions are you making? If the company is making profits, you can determine if you believe the company will continue to make profits. If the answer is yes, then it can pay a dividend and while the stock price will go up and down, your total return over the years is healthy.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.