Pre-populated WooCommerce checkout fields: dropdown fields issue

Found my own solution. The key was to use a different callback and reference woocommerces actual field name. Have simplified the code below down to the essence.

 function mmd_list_claimlisting($DBRecordId)
  {
    global $woocommerce;
    $Record = mmd_list_GetDBRecord($DBRecordId);

    $woocommerce->session->set('claim_state', $Record['BusinessState']);
    $woocommerce->session->set('claim_country', $Record['BusinessCountry']);

     // No matching variation found
  }

 ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
 //  Pre-fill out the check out fields with the listing data
 ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
 function FillInCheckOutFields($fields)
    {
     global $woocommerce;    


      switch($input)
           {
           case  'physical-state':
              $claim_state = $woocommerce->session->get('claim_state');
              if(!is_null($claim_state))
                 return $claim_state;   
            break;

           case  'physical-state':
              $claim_country= $woocommerce->session->get('claim_country');
              if(!is_null($claim_country))
                return $claim_country;  
            break;

          } 

    return $fields; 
  }
 add_filter( 'woocommerce_checkout_get_value', 'populating_checkout_fields', 10, 2 );   

tech