Greedy Trial Lawyer
"If Pigs Could Fly" Toy Banned From Insurance Company Offices
Category: In Your Face
Sometimes even pigs can fly. A rejected insurance claimant was awarded almost $3 million against an insurance company that motivated its claim processing personnel to reduce claim payments with a battery-operated if pigs could fly toy. The insurance company plans an appeal and to remove all flying pig toys from its premises.
Excerpts from the newsarticle:
American Family Mutual Insurance Co. has been hit with a nearly $3 million verdict in a case involving a former University of Colorado professor and UW-Madison graduate who was seriously injured in a car crash.A jury in Boulder, Colo., granted the award to Dominic Peressini. It's believed to be the largest bad-faith verdict ever against an auto insurer over lost wages in Colorado.
Peressini, 39, filed a lawsuit after the Madison-based insurer allegedly denied his claim for lost wages from consulting work following a 2003 car accident that left him with a brain injury and mangled arm. Peressini's insurance policy included $125,000 in coverage for lost work time.
A Boulder District Court jury concluded that Peressini was owed much more, however, awarding $1.1 million in punitive damages and $1.1 million for pain and suffering. It said that American Family's refusal to pay Peressini's claim was "willful and wanton."
Under Colorado state law, willful conduct triples Peressini's lost wages award to $375,000. American Family must also pay the plaintiff's attorney fees and 18 percent annual interest on the three-year-old wage award, according to Denver attorney Sam Livingston.
American Family, the country's 10th-largest auto insurance provider, said it was considering an appeal in the case.
"Obviously, we're very disappointed in the verdict," American Family spokesman Ken Muth said Wednesday.
"Our overriding business philosophy is this: We pay what we owe ... and that's what we believe occurred in Mr. Peressini's claim," said Muth.
Underwriting issues became a major focus of the plaintiff's case that went to the jury earlier this month. Attorney Livingston had used a former American Family nurse case manager in Denver to portray the insurer as a callous claims adjuster, with the Colorado office under intense pressure to reduce personal injury protection payouts.
Jurors were told about a senior case manager who kept on her desk a battery-operated "if pigs could fly" toy, used as an office joke each time a rejected claim brought the staff closer to its cost-cutting goal, according to a report in the Rocky Mountain News.
Among the documents introduced was a 2003 Colorado business plan that called for reducing claims payouts by 28 percent to match the lower claims-loss ratios of American Family's competitors.
"The business plan was the smoking gun," Livingston said. "Underwriting problems shouldn't have anything to do with what you pay out in claims."
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