Posted on 03/24/2006 8:03:20 PM PST by WKB
GULFPORT, Miss. - A federal judge on Friday refused to throw out a lawsuit that a couple filed against Allstate Insurance Co. after the insurer refused to cover damage to their home from Hurricane Katrina.
The lawsuit, filed by Elmer and Alexa Buente of Gulfport, is one of many spawned by a fierce debate over whether Gulf Coast homes were destroyed by the Aug. 29 hurricane's wind or water.
U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr., said the question of how much damage to the couple's home was caused by wind and water is a "fact-specific" inquiry that must be decided at trial.
"I cannot say that there is no set of facts the plaintiffs may establish in support of their claim that would entitle them to relief," wrote Senter, who sits in Mississippi.
Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a high-profile attorney who represents the Buentes, said the ruling is a "huge victory" for all Allstate policyholders whose post-Katrina claims were denied.
"This was their kill shot," Scruggs said of Allstate's motion to dismiss the case. "They asked for the case to be thrown out. Instead, it was rejected right back in the faces."
Allstate spokesman Michael Siemienas said the judge indicated "there are factual issues still to be explored."
However, the company "is pleased that the judge ruled, 'The exclusions found in the policy for water damage and for damages attributable to flooding are valid and enforceable policy provisions,'" Siemienas added, quoting from the 11-page ruling.
The Buentes, who bought their Gulfport home in June 2005, claim the Allstate agent who sold them their policy told them they didn't need to purchase "flood coverage" because they didn't live in a flood plain.
Allstate paid the couple $2,600 for damage caused by wind, but the Buentes say their home sustained up to $100,000 in damage. Allstate argues that its policies do not cover damage from "storm surge," or wind-driven water.
Allstate, based in Northbrook, Ill., is the second-largest U.S. personal-lines insurer behind State Farm.
Scruggs' legal team is suing four other insurance companies - Metropolitan, State Farm, Nationwide and United Services Automobile Association.
Scruggs said Friday's ruling could be "precedential and highly influential" to the other cases.
"This is exactly what we were trying to get accomplished," he said.
In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Scruggs said he's gathering evidence that companies are pressuring engineers to alter their conclusions on storm damage so claims can be denied.
Scruggs said a whistleblower - a "highly placed insider" at a major insurance company - has given him copies of "coerced and altered engineering reports" that companies tried to keep "under lock and key."
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood also is suing insurance companies for denying Katrina claims. Hood has said he also is investigating insurance companies for their "fraudulent" handling of claims.
Mississippi Ping
About time Insurance Companies are the biggest rip offs around!
Mind-boggling to me that anyone living anywhere near Gulfport Mississippi wouldn't think they needed flood insurance for the possibility of storm surge.
I have a friend who has served as defense counsel for Allstate. He recently confided, "you want to go to bat for your client, not go to hell for them". Come Judgement Day, I know he will have other problems just for being an attorney but he now longer works for Allstate because he "doesn't want to go to hell".
Want a good feel for how people in the industry feel about Allstate"? Go to www.allstateinsurancesucks.com.
It's doesn't matter. The flood insurance company will say that wind destroyed the houses and the housing insurance have said that water destroyed the houses. Neither would pay and since as Hurricane is both wind and water this pasring of words is fraud and the insurance companies should be sue to pay for their previous agreements.
Nothing personal, but you don't know much about insurance. There are no "flood insurance" companies, the federal government (YOU and ME) are the flood "insurers". Commercial insurers are much too smart to take on flood risks and don't except in special situations. So, almost all flood "insurance" is sold by FEMA/NFIP and the losses are covered by the US Treasury.
The states regulate and promulgate insurance. The insurers do not even write the policy forms. The states write the policies and usually home insurance policy forms specifically exclude flooding (rising water). So, the "commercial" insurers have not anticipated flood losses and have never collected any premium for such losses because they simply are not covered. But people like Trent Lott want the commercial insurers to pay for what are flood claims and so do these lawyers. That's not right. It might feel good but it isn't right.
After listening to over 200 flood insurance ads over the course of three years, I disagree.
Beside which, you missed my entire point.
I hear you.
I lived a good many years in Florida, and knew several people who bought homes, and eschewed flood insurance.
Mostly because they could not afford the premiums and/or insurance was not to be had.
Others "lost" their property due to floods and hurricanes, but they never seemed to suffer much...
Better known as Trent Lott's brother-in-law, aka Tobacco Company chaser.
New All State motto, "You're in the toilet with All State"..
Yes, there are.
Maybe I didn't get your point. I read your post again and it didn;t make sense.
Name them.
http://www.thefloodinsuranceagency.com/
You can buy some right there, for starters.
My point is that no matter how much you pay to insurers, those insurers will not honor their agreements, unless you sue them.
They sell FEMA/NFIP insurance. IE: Federal Flood Insurance.
Who needs flood insurance?
By Insure.com
When your home is flooded, it can lead to financial ruin if you don't have the proper insurance. And note this: A basic homeowners policy won't cover your flood damage! You need flood insurance — a special policy backed by the federal government, with cooperation from local communities and private insurance companies.
About 200 insurance companies, possibly including the company that already handles your homeowners or auto insurance, write and service flood insurance policies for the government, which finances the program through premiums.
http://info.insure.com/home/flood/
Picking a company
Since the federal government sets the rates, private insurance companies that sell flood insurance compete on service, not on price. These "Write Your Own" companies make their profit from service fees allotted by the NFIP. When comparing insurers, one question to ask is how quickly are claims resolved? A company in poor financial health may not be able to pay its claims as promptly as a prosperous company.
When writing flood insurance policies, companies tend to focus on specific regions. Unisun, for example, provides coverage to homeowners from Virginia to Texas. Other major flood insurers, such as Bankers Insurance Group, write policies throughout the country, but are not considered national providers. State Farm, Allstate, Mutual of Omaha, and Travelers are examples of companies that write nationally.
**So there ARE companies that sell flood insurance.
Absurd. Like I said, you don't know what you are talking about.
They sell flood insurance for the federal government. None of the companies mentioned pay a penny in claims. All the money comes from FEMA/NFIP. Which is backed by the US Treasury. The only thing the insurers you refer to do is push paper and handle claims "float". They are not the ultimate "insurer". They are third party administrators. All the insurance they sell is 100% reinsured by FEMA/NFIP.
President Bush, as we all know, despise black people and tries to marshall anything under his power to kill them and wreak havoc with the lives of any survivors. But Bush, as we also know, is dangerously incompetent. So when he formed, steered, and intensified Hurricane Katrina in his attempt to annihilate the African-Americans of New Orleans, he goofed and sent the killer surge into Gulfport, Mississippi (oops). Bush therefore had to detonate the canal walls in New Orleans to destroy the city, a task that he didn't bother to accomplish until the next day.
I'm going to be on Haley's side.
You, of course, are leaving out the part of the expense PAID IN by the purchasers; are you doing that on purpose?
Many people HAVE flood insurance and never make a claim.
Now that's just not true; flood insurance covers up to the waterline and homeowners is suppose to cover from the waterline up.
But when there no house left, only a pile of wood, how do you define the "waterline".
Like I said before, the flood insurance will say that wind destroyed the house and the housing insurance have said that water destroyed the house.
thanks for the url - I'll check it out
Here is a bit more for you to consider. This has happened with other floods in the past. The US Treasury gets hit for the "uninsured" amount and eventually it's just "written off". So, a person living high and dry on top of a mountain that pays income taxes will pay for part of the Katrina flood "insurance " losses.
New Orleans will flood over and over and over. The only entity dumb enough to "insure" the area is the federal government using your tax dollars.
To learn more about what flood insurance is based on for New Orleans see here.The way FEMA does flood hazard mapping and allocates flood zones (which is what "premiums" are based on) is pretty simple.
Usually once a property is a total loss from flooding FEMA/NFIP will not allow another structure to be built unless it is elevated to prevent future flooding. This happened in the Houston area, for example. The only way to rebuild was way above ground. But how can they do this in many parts of New Orleans? They can't because a lot of the area is way below sea level so they will do what they have in the past. FEMA/NFIP will set flood zones which have nothing to do with the actual hazard. And the premiums will be cheap enough for people to get loans and rebuild. Eventually it will all flood again.
I never said it wasn't going to cost us money, did I?
You're not an insurance adjuster, are you?
You look at the foundation and the debris. You look at the houses next door, across the street.
It's pretty easy to tell water damage from wind damage.
Why not just say no? (I know, I know.......it's a stupid question, but I'm dying to hear the reason........LOL)
I never, EVER thought I would say this.
But, like you, I'm with Dickie on this one...
especially if this is true...
"Scruggs said a whistleblower - a "highly placed insider" at a major insurance company - has given him copies of "coerced and altered engineering reports" that companies tried to keep "under lock and key."
Can you say, "Tobacco redux"?
"Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood also is suing insurance companies for denying Katrina claims. Hood has said he also is investigating insurance companies for their "fraudulent" handling of claims."
Meet the *new* Mikie Moore...same as the *old* Mikie Moore.
Though, in this instance, it might not be a bad thing.
No, you said that insurance companies sell flood insurance. Technically, they don't. They sell for the federal government what's called flood insurance. None of the insurers mentioned in the link you posted take a penny of the risk themselves.
My main point has been that it's really not insurance because the federal government is transferring the risk to all taxpayers. If it really was insurance and was based on the risk the premiums would be too expensive for anyone to afford. So, in flood prone areas and especially New Orleans the federal government promotes what is essentially flood insurance the whole country pays the premiums for. Some people see it as a form of welfare.
You are absolutely correct about your comment about telling water from wind damage. It's a science and adjusters can tell causation.
Howlin, I know how smart you are. You know the answer to that question.
So when will Claptrap Insurance Co open and sell
insurance below cost to people in the Florida Keys, say?
I just wanted somebody besides me to even THINK it.
As to this lawsuit, Dickie is playing around here with fire; a homeowners policy is a contract -- and if a jury of people who have a vested interest (their own or maybe their families' homes, for instance) decides it doesn't care what the policy says, it thinks the insurance company should pay, all hell is going to break loose in this country.
How could any insurance company endorsed by President Palmer be crooked?
And like I said above, you have people like Trent Lott pushing exactly that. He wants commerical insurers to pay flood claims on homeowners and fire insurance policies that specifically exclude flood coverage. He wants what this lawyer wants, to force commerical insurers to give away free flood coverage. Scary.
You don't understand what the case is about. Read the article. Your supposition of the allegatiions are backward.
The solution would be for Allstate (or any insurance company) to redline areas which have been devastated by floods in the past 100 years and require that for homeowners in those areas to buy and maintain a regular homeowners policy, they must show regular proof of carrying flood insurance. It could easily be handled on-line between companies. I don't understand why this isn't SOP anyway.
State farm, Progressive, Farmers and the other theives masquerading as legitinate businesses are no better and State Farm is worse.
Trent Lott's lawyer IS Dickie Scruggs.
And Dickie Scruggs IS his brother-in-law.
Scary, huh?
So they succeed in breaking the homeowners' policy, as I said above, a contract.
So, does that mean that the bank can call me up and say, "Hey, we want more money, so we're going to "break" our mortgage with you and raise your interest rate?"
What I would like to know is this...
If there is nothing left standing, in fact much of it washed away,
HOW do you tell if it was flood driven or wind driven?
BTW, this thread is NOT about New Orleans.
New Orleans is a no-brainer.
They would have been fine had they invested the given monies into the levees.
It's about Mississippi, which is above sea level, and suffered the brunt of the storm.
If you live on the Gulf Coast or Florida or most of the way up the Atlantic coast, you already should have coverage from:
http://www.floodsmart.gov
If not, don't cry when you have water damage!
http://www.fema.gov/media/fhm/firm/ot_firm.htm
Oh, look at this:
The Buentes, who bought their Gulfport home in June 2005, claim the Allstate agent who sold them their policy told them they didn't need to purchase "flood coverage" because they didn't live in a flood plain.
Now, if that is true, and they can prove it, they will get their money -- but it will ONLY apply to them, not anybody else.
I know...Dickie does leave a bad taste.
But...this is what I'm thinking.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1602844/posts?page=32#32
My state needs help.
All politics is local...
Much of it??
Is the land completely empty?
There's rumor here that some insurance company take out wind damage and hail damage from the homeowners. Now we will have to get flood, wind, hail and homeowners insurances. Pretty soon, homeowners won't cover anything.
You can say that again; and when local politicians are in trouble, OR they want to make a name for themselves, they tell their constituents that the big bad insurance companies are screwing them.
It looks like a nuke hit it.
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