Tag: Lexington Insurance Company (AIG)

Jeff Amy at the Press Register tells the story of Slabbed’s Pro Se Plaintiff, Maralou Richards: “I wanted to find out if the law is really for the people, and it’s really not”

Here at Slabbed, Nowdy and I have split the workload, with me taking press relations and her doing most of our legal profession outreach. From the time of Nowdy’s first post on Maralou Richards last February I figured this unique case would certainly cross over into the traditional media. Time would prove my instincts rights…..just that none of the reporters I emailed with the details would be the one to bring this story to the realm of the mass media. Rather it was journalist that I was previously unfamiliar, Jeff Amy at the Mobile Press Register, that saw the implications and penned a story that well encapsulates the struggles of ordinary policyholders in a legal system that is completely stacked against them. Jeff’s story appears today in both the Mobile Press Register and it’s sister newspaper the Mississippi Press. On behalf of Nowdy and the Slabbed nation we welcome Jeff to the post Katrina party:

It was just another in the rush of federal suits against Mississippi insurers last August, just before the three-year statute of limitations after Hurricane Katrina expired.

Except it wasn’t. Without a lawyer, then-77-year-old Maralou Richards of Ocean Springs filed a handwritten complaint against a unit of AIG, at the time the world’s largest insurance company.

Richards made a confidential settlement in June with Lexington Insurance Co., the court record shows.

But she’s still unhappy. “I wanted to find out if the law is really for the people, and it’s really not,” she said. Continue reading “Jeff Amy at the Press Register tells the story of Slabbed’s Pro Se Plaintiff, Maralou Richards: “I wanted to find out if the law is really for the people, and it’s really not””

Judge Ginger Berrigan, Welcome to the infirmary of the SLABBED

Since I’m not a lawyer, I really just have one standard and that’s does an argument or decision make sense.  A lot of these decisions just don’t. Why?

Judge Helen “Ginger” Berrigan of Louisiana’s Eastern District Federal Court is one judge I had in mind when responding to Chip Merlin’s comment on the need to better educate judges trying Katrina insurance cases.

However, I don’t believe Judge Berrigan needs educating.  Instead, it appears she’s contracted the highly contagious strain of 5th Flu that causes Leonard hallucinations and delusions of coverage.

Now, I’m not a doctor either; but, I could tell Judge Berrigan was was coming down with something when I read the  Order and Reasons she issued in Adams v Lexington. So, I examined the docket and several of the documents; and, then, I read her history.

Based on what I learned, I suspect she had a natural immunity to the 5th flu as she showed no symptoms of Leonard hallucinations in her reasoning when she threw a wrench into FEMA’s effort at redemption with an order barring FEMA from trying to reclaim some of the money it had thrown at anyone claiming to be a Katrina victim.

In her ruling, Judge Helen Berrigan criticized FEMA for writing notification letters laced with “incomprehensible hieroglyphic abbreviations” and urged the government “to return to their original mandate of alleviating their suffering and focus its substantial powers on continuing to help those entitled to relief.” Continue reading “Judge Ginger Berrigan, Welcome to the infirmary of the SLABBED”

Pigs fly in Hawaii Court with justice the wind beneath their wings

People who love sausage and people who believe in justice should never watch either of them being made

As a life-long lover of sausage; sometimes-disillusioned believer in justice; and intimate observer of the making of both, I’ve found times when watching sausage-making might be the less disturbing.

A hog, of course, would differ.  I might, too, if I lived in Hawaii’s First Circuit or, as it turns out, the State of Montana or the Eastern District of California – a thought I would not have considered had a reader not provided Plaintiff’s opposition to the Pro Hac Vice admission of two Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher attorneys for the Defendant, Dole from Gerardo Dennis Patrickson, et all versus Dole Food Company, Inc., et al.

Plaintiffs object to the application for admission pro hac vice of the Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher (“GDC”) attorneys based on the evidence of their firm’s record of sanctioned misconduct, misconduct that has no place in this litigation and file this memorandum in opposition.

Plaintiffs’ opposition is based on the record of the law firm of Gibson Dunn and Crutcher’s sanctioned misconduct that demonstrates a pattern and practice of abusive litigation tactics designed to conceal the truth, disrupt the orderly progression of litigation and exhaust the resources of the adverse parties. in an attempt to intimidate them and their counsel from pursuing their claims .on the merits, misconduct spawned by a culture of obstruction, gamesmanship and flagrant disregard for the authority of the Courts.

Gibson, Dunn’s record of sanctioned misconduct speaks for itself

Plaintiffs were locked and loaded when they filed their motion in opposition. Continue reading “Pigs fly in Hawaii Court with justice the wind beneath their wings”