Scruggs Fights Back

Earlier I posted that State Farm was trying to get Scruggs disqualified from participating in a Katrina suit. It seems that Scruggs has its own dose of nastiness for the big dog. From Insurance Journal:

The Scruggs Katrina Group filed federal charges against State Farm, E.A. Renfroe Company, and Forensic Analysis and Engineering Company on behalf of 21 Mississippi policyholders whose homes were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.

The suit was filed June 20 in the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi under the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act or ‘RICO.’[...]

In a press release issued Wednesday after a press conference in Pascagoula, Miss., Barrett announced a ‘laundry list’ of “actions taken by State Farm and conspirators” that led to the suit, including:

• threatening experts who disagreed with their desired result
• concealing information that would work in the policyholder’s favor
• destroying or falsifying reports
• placing pressure on engineers to use scientifically inaccurate and deceptive language
• firing engineers who refused to be corrupted
• inventing a new policy to exclude all hurricane damage
• using their strength and size to intimidate policyholders in the mediation process

Now I wish I had watched the Sopranos. Invocation of anti-mob law creates a strange urge to make mob references…although I can’t help but wonder about which side is behaving more thuggishly in the legal system.

If learning to sell ex-wind cover to manage aggregations is an element to an insurer violating RICO… life could become very interesting indeed for writers in storm-prone areas.

Personally, I think that’s one of the weaker links that could be drawn.

(I wonder if lawyers are paid by the bullet-point, much in the same way that consulting actuaries have been accused of being paid based on the number of different methodologies used when conducting a reserve review.)