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from storm damage.

Angry over the denial of claims, a class action lawsuit was filed against State Farm and others, by property owners who contend that wind caused the storm surge and policyholders should be entitled to their claims. State Farm settled their part of this lawsuit late last month agreeing to pay over $80 million dollars to almost 600 policyholders named in the suit, and at least another $50 million with the potential of hundreds of millions more for those policyholders from Mississippi not named in the lawsuit but whose claims were denied by State Farm.

Only two weeks before, State Farm lost a lawsuit in Biloxi, Mississippi on the same grounds as the class action suit. A federal jury awarded Norman and Genevieve Broussard $2.5 million in punitive damages even after the judge in the case held State Farm liable for $223,292 in damages.

Late last week State Farm announced that they would no longer issue any homeowner policies in the state of Mississippi and according to Mike Fernandez, a State Farm vice-president "The real challenge in Mississippi is the uncertainty being created by all the judicial matters". Well here's a thought Mr. Fernandez, if your company would have paid the damn claims in the first place, you wouldn't have all these "judicial matters".

This amounts to nothing more than State Farm retaliating against the people of Mississippi for standing up and telling them enough is enough. After 17 months of waiting for claims to be paid, living in FEMA trailers, motels, shelters and with relatives, policyholders finally took them to court and rightfully so. State Farm has proven to the people of Mississippi as well as the rest of the country that it isn't the "good neighbor" it's been claiming to be the past few decades and frankly it's not trustworthy. State Farm wasn't the only carrier to do this, all of them have. Insurance companies and their executives are really a sorry bunch. They push all their advertising down our throats, think nothing of spending millions of dollars on prime time television advertising extolling their companies virtues and righteousness and all the while leaving their policyholders homeless and in the cold.

I can't imagine what George J. Mecherle would think of his company if he were alive today. State Farm's company motto is "Like a good neighbor State Farm is there", but a more realistic motto for the company should be "Sometimes fences make the best neighbors". They've sure proven that to the American people.

Learn more about this author, Brian C. Noell.
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