The Designated Manager Walks Out With Eleven Open Files
Cascade Consulting & Investigations is a North Dakota-licensed agency with a single Fargo office. Its license identifies Grant as the designated manager, the licensed investigator responsible for the agency's operations. Grant resigns March 3 with two weeks' notice. The owner, Priya, is a business manager who has never been licensed and is not yet eligible. Cascade employs two investigator-trainees who each require supervision, and it carries eleven open files, including a contested custody matter with a hearing set for April 14 and a workers' compensation surveillance file for an insurer. On March 20 a new client, a property management company, wants Cascade to begin tenant background investigations 'next week.' Priya's plan is to keep Grant's name on the license, pay him a small consulting fee, and have him 'check in monthly' by phone while the trainees do the fieldwork and Priya handles client contact.
1. Evaluate Priya's plan against the licensing structure the agency operates under.
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The plan fails at its first premise. The designated manager is not a name on a certificate; the role exists so that a licensed, accountable investigator actually directs the agency's investigative work. A monthly phone call from a person who no longer works there, compensated to lend his credential, is a nominal arrangement - the classic 'rent-a-license' pattern that boards treat as both a supervision failure and a misrepresentation in the licensing record.
Specific defects:
- Holding Grant out as manager while he has no operational role is a false statement to the Board, and Grant is a party to it. His own license is at risk, which is why a reputable manager would refuse.
- Unsupervised trainees. Trainees work under supervision by definition; if the only supervisor is a phone call, their fieldwork is unsupervised. Hours accrued under sham supervision can be challenged when they later apply for full licensure.
- Priya's client contact is unlicensed activity if she is directing investigative method, setting investigative scope, or interpreting results for clients.
- The April 14 hearing makes this urgent: a custody report signed off by an absentee manager is a cross-examination gift.
Exposure: agency license subject to suspension or revocation, both trainees' progression jeopardized, and every open file's work product devalued.
2. What must Cascade do, and in what order? Address the open files, the trainees, and the new engagement.
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Sequence matters - do the notification first, because the agency's credibility with the Board depends on volunteering the problem rather than being caught.
- Notify the Board in writing that the designated manager has left and identify the interim arrangement. Do not wait for renewal season. Confirm the current notification deadline and the required replacement qualifications in N.D.A.C. tit. 93, because the agency should not assume a grace period exists.
- Recruit a qualified replacement who actually functions as manager: on site, reviewing reports, signing off, available to trainees. If the agency cannot do that quickly, the honest options are to suspend new investigative work or to wind down.
- Triage open files. Contact each client in writing. The insurer on the surveillance file and the custody client's attorney must know who is now responsible. Where continuity cannot be guaranteed, offer transfer to another licensed agency with written client consent and a clean file handoff.
- Stop trainee fieldwork that requires supervision until a supervisor exists. Keep them on training, records, and non-investigative tasks.
- Decline or defer the property management engagement. Accepting work 'next week' with no manager is the fact pattern that produces an unlicensed-activity finding.
Do not let Priya sign investigative reports. She can sign contracts and invoices; she cannot sign as though she directed an investigation.