Anita Lee is one busy lady lately. She is reporting that Lecky King finally spoke with the MID on their long delayed market conduct study. She is also reporting Chip Merlin is trying to schedule her deposition for McIntosh. Given Lee Harrell’s prior public pronouncements on the MID State Farm Market Conduct Exam the public here still expects the report to be a whitewash.
Lee also ties in King’s conduct in Oklahoma to the story, after all, delay, deny and deceive did not originate in Mississippi. This is a must read for those wanting some basic background on claims handling tactics on the Farm:
After refusing to answer policyholders’ questions for almost two years, a State Farm claims manager accused of mishandling Katrina claims has talked to the Mississippi Insurance Department for a market conduct study of the company and also is prepared to testify in policyholder cases.
MID’s long-awaited and overdue market conduct study of how the company handled claims was supposed to be released before month’s end, but now won’t be ready until late September at the earliest. A source familiar with the study says follow-up is needed as a result of Alexis “Lecky” King’s responses.
An attorney in the contentious McIntosh vs. State Farm case, Chip Merlin, said State Farm has indicated King also will answer questions and is available for pre-trial testimony, called a deposition, in that case. Merlin said he is trying to schedule the deposition for early September in Pensacola, where King lives.
King has since at least November 2006 refused to answer questions about Katrina in previous depositions taken by policyholder attorneys in Oklahoma and Florida. Presumably, she has done the same in Mississippi cases, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert H. Walker has ordered her testimony closed to the public so only the attorneys involved in the cases know for sure.
They are forbidden to discuss the sealed depositions and insurance records filed in U.S. District Court in Gulfport.
In other states, King has refused to answer questions on the grounds that she might incriminate herself. She was under criminal investigation by state and federal authorities examining State Farm claims, her attorney has acknowledged. The state investigation has ended and the federal government has so declined to pursue charges in court against State Farm.
State Farm has denied any wrongdoing. The company would not respond Tuesday to the Sun Herald’s questions about King.
King’s attorney, Joe Hollomon, has said she has done nothing wrong. But two former insurance adjusters, Cori and Kerri Rigsby, say King ordered engineering reports altered to minimize what State Farm owed policyholders. Hollomon did not respond to the Sun Herald’s request for an interview.
“The lady took the Fifth Amendment all day long” in Florida, said Merlin, who is from Tampa. “What else she is going to say, I have no idea.”
Merlin said she has confirmed that an infamous sticky not on an expert report completed for the McIntosh property was in her handwriting. The note said: “Put in Wind file — DO NOT Pay Bill, DO NOT discuss.”
A subsequent report King ordered shifted the predominant cause of the McIntosh’s loss to water, covered by the federal flood program.
One thing I noted in the article, Sop, is that King’s testimony delays the release of the market report – amazing timing don’t you think with all the various motions in play.
If you follow the link to the post I did back in May, the Sun Herald quoted Lee Harrell as saying:
Anything Harrell touches is going to be suspect anyway, Sop, so they might as well contribute the effort to the folks over in NOLA – maybe the market survey will work better than the newspaper the Corps used to patch leaks in the canals.