The Tampa Tribune ran an editorial in today's paper regarding the forty-seven percent average rate increase request made by State Farm. Many editorials are not very helpful. This one is on point and I hope that our government leaders are paying attention. Here is the editorial in its entirety:
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When will our legislature learn not to trust insurance executives and, especially, their lobbyists? Maybe when we vote insurance-beholden legislators out of office. The Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald ran front page stories regarding State Farm's administrative request for an average rate increase of 47%. At first I thought it was a mistake, until all three papers reported the same increase and the St. Petersburg Times indicated that some increases for existing rates could be 91%.
Continue Reading...Two recurrent issues are keeping policyholders from full recovery following disasters. First, policyholders are not getting flood insurance even though it is available. Second, policyholders are not increasing the limits of coverage to reflect the full costs of construction or replacement. They are exposed to the risk of being significantly under-insured.
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The American Association for Justice conducted a study and concluded that Allstate Insurance is the worst insurer in America. (Click here to see a complete copy of the study) The report speaks for itself, but it truly details some outrageous behavior and a claims culture that clearly favors Allstate's pocketbook over beneficiaries.
Continue Reading...Rarely do hurricanes which start as storms off the African coast make it all the way across the Atlantic to the United States in the hurricane months of June and July. The last one to do so was Hurricane Bertha in 1996. Some of my blogging meteorologist colleagues began following a huge weather wave last week. (You can check out BobbiStorm's Hurricane Harbor blog at http://hurricaneharbor.blogspot.com.) Yesterday, this storm, also named Bertha, went from a tropical storm to category one hurricane by 11 am EST, and then to a category three hurricane by 5 pm, with winds in excess of 100 miles per hour. Fortunately, it appears that the projected path is somewhere towards Bermuda -- but you never know for sure with a hurricane this young and far away. We'll know more today, when a hurricane hunter plane flies into the storm for the first time. Another storm wave is a couple days away from leaving the African coast. As the summer waters warm, they have to watched more closely. Bertha is strong and signals to me the start of a more classical hurricane formation from the African Coast. Buy your batteries and make certain your insurance is up-to-date. From now through October, everyone along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts needs to pay at least a little attention to the weather.
Jeffrey Stempel, a long time admired colleague and current Insurance Law Professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, has published a wonderful textbook, Litigation Road: The Story of Campbell v. State Farm. I just started reading the book, and will comment in greater detail following the Holiday weekend. However, as a shameless and free plug, I encourage every attorney or person interested in the finest thoughts about how State Farm operates and how an actual bad faith case is litigated, to pick up a copy of this book. You can order the book from West Group by clicking on the following link: Litigation Road: The Story of Campbell v. State Farm.
The insurance business constantly changes. I have often referred to it as a gambling operation, with the insurance industry making the rules--subject to possible state regulation. There is a definite trend of Big Insurance abandoning its customers in geographic areas where a large catastrophe is more likely. They are doing this based upon an economic concept of Enterprise Risk Theory, where the insurer wants to prevent large and unknown losses from occuring. Those insurers are increasingly using computer generated models of catastrophes to decide in which areas they want to stop selling policies.
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It is very, very hard to be a good judge. Of all the human endeavors, making decisions that directly impact people, their lives, and dreams on a wide variety of intensely disputed controversies is an awesome responsibility. To be a good judge, you have to be very smart, patient, understanding, intellectually and factually honest, have common sense, be experienced in life, energetic, restrained, detached from undue influence, noble, hard working, and intensely dedicated to seeing that people have a chance for justice. It is impossible to find all of these traits in one person, I know my best talents are found somewhere other than as a referee in a trial courtroom.
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