You don’t suppose an insurance company, faced with catastrophic losses in the face of last year’s hurricanes would… er…. fudge the paperwork, do you? From The Blotter:
State Farm Insurance supervisors systematically demanded that Hurricane Katrina damage reports be buried or replaced or changed so that the company would not have to pay policyholders’ claims in Mississippi, two State Farm insiders tell ABC News.
[snip]
The sisters say they saw supervisors go to great lengths to pressure outside engineers to prepare reports concluding that damage was caused by water, not covered under State Farm policies, rather than by wind.
They say reports that concluded that damage was caused by wind, for which State Farm would have to pay, were hidden in a special file and new reports were ordered.
Why am I not surprised?
With so many claims due to Katrina and Rita damage, this in a busy storm season that followed a busy season for Florida, I am not surprised if more stories like these come out. The question is will any of these stories result in a benefit for the homeowners? Sorry I don’t have a story link for this post, but earlier this year a judge ruled in favor of insurance companies already. He said that it was up to the homeowner to show factual proof of the specific part of their home that was damaged by wind and not water. Plus, the insurance company only had to pay damages to the roof of their house if that was all the could be shown as wind damage. Good luck to everyone getting around that burden.
I now feel about Insurance people about the way I used to feel about Republican campaign operatives (the sort of people who work on their campaings: ” They aren’t scum. They are beneath scum. They are the nastly little things that live in the dark underneath the scum and feed on it.”
State Farm…figures. I remember some years ago, my sister told me of two cars that collided. Both were insured by State Farm. The police report clearly stated that car “A” was at fault, but SF assigned fault to car “B”, since it only had liability coverage (car “A” also had collision) and so they were able to avoid paying the claim. They also jacked up the rates for the driver of car “B” (the driver of car “A” was already in the assigned risk pool, so they couldn’t raise his rates any further.)
~EdT.
Jack —
There are separate suits and issues for Mississippi (relevant to this particular post) and Louisiana, and it was only a week or two ago that the first of such suits was ruled on (in favor of the insurance companies). However, the LA Attorney General (Foti) has been pushing for an extension to extend filing storm-related lawsuits since the statute of limitations was approaching.
So the whole thing is very much just heating up.