Katrina through the eyes of State Farm: a now familiar story that begins in Bloomington, in a boardroom, awaiting an angry sea. August 29, a third of Mississippi is nuked. In comes a headline-starved lawyer, well healed and ready to “save the people.” State Farm repairs to Birmingham, a Roveside rat’s nest. Alas, the 4 year odyssey begins.
In the meander of this cyclonic tragedy, countless homes, lives, reputations and chattel are ravaged like the spoils of war. A senior federal judge, bent on political revenge, soils the bench he occupies. Two “factory” girls of the Cat adjusting world, forthright and honest-to-a-fault, are savaged by a $56 billion racketeering monopoly and its Hessian body broker. Associated hard-driving plaintiff lawyers, indispensible lifelines to thousands of victims, are systematically slandered by thug corporate lawyers, and then, through no fault of their own, thoughtlessly disqualified by a rudderless federal court. Behind the scenes, lifer law clerks – insidious martinets of the inner sanctum – work the ex parte back channels for ways to advance their impish political agendas. A 30 year pimp politician is stripped bare and lampooned, a righteous comeuppance for the thousands of lives he’s ruined. A neophyte lawyer-journalist who wouldn’t know a hurricane loss if it bit his private parts off, shills and cons his way into the affray, and trafficking on scandal, emerges as a self-ordained insurance expert.
Four (4) years of rampant fraud, $13 million a day in falsely settled claims, without so much as a single uptick on the legal side. Think of the money spent, the millions wasted, the dreadnought trial schedules, as if the whole thing were an interminable English parlor game. Motions, replies, briefs, extensions, sanctimonious trials, an endless procession of mindless bureaucracy, saddling already helpless people with cost in the hundreds of thousands, all just to get a contract debt paid. Unable to deliver even basic service, the court outsources, dumping bereft insureds in the laps of purchased mediator-lawyers, eager to stay in good with their fee paying, corporate check writers. Judged for fidelity of service and “get-er-done” efficiency, the legal system is an antideluvian disaster, a deus ex machina, lacking rope and hoist. Continue reading “Ahoy WYO Fiduciary, Icy Waters of NFIP Lie Ahead!”