Tuesday, August 15, 2006

i just shit my pants.

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 4:19 PM

10 Comments:

At 9:54 AM , Blogger totallybloated said...

so the judge admits that the language in the insurance policies is not clear about storm surge, but then he concludes it will not pay for it?

why do people have insurance?

 
At 10:02 AM , Blogger Vyux said...

I'm at loss for words... How can this lawyer describe this verdict as a "win."

"The Leonards did not win as much money as I hoped they would have, but they won this case,'' said one of their attorneys, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. "It's always great to get a win in the first game of the season, whether it's by one point or 30 points."

Asking for 158,000 and gettting less than 2,000...

Dickie Scruggs Esq., that is some jackassery.

 
At 11:52 AM , Blogger totallybloated said...

the lawyer calls it a win because now he can get paid.

 
At 3:01 PM , Blogger Little Gordie said...

Attorneys only get a percentage (typically a third) of whatever is awarded. So "Dickie" Scruggs is walking away with somewhere in the vicinity of $400.

For him to consider this a "victory" means that (1) he's never won a case before; (2) his cost of living includes only a camo tent and a weekly crack habit; (3) he's a shill for the insurance companies; or (4) he's certifiably insane.

Having never met him (and having difficulty imagining someone this stupid graduating from any law school), my bet is 3. What else is new.

 
At 3:19 PM , Blogger ayatollah assahola said...

you would be wrong about Dickie Scruggs, Gordie. He's known throughout the region down here. A big time plaintiff's lawyer. Won some very big cases, and has made a ton of money. So one, two, and three are out of the picture. I'm willing to give you four, however, based solely on his ludicrous statements yesterday. but there is something to said about positivity. The truth is that this battle is far from over. This case was only only the beginning really.

 
At 4:43 PM , Blogger doomgoblin said...

Didn't Dickie Scruggs win huge against Big Tobacco a few years back or was that some other folksy sounding barrister?

While there were lots of shitty things said in that article, and lord knows i'm no defender of insurance companies (i think it should be illegal to run a for profit insurance company for example), and i'm SURE the language was ambiguous, it did sound like the plaintiffs had been given the option to purchase flood insurance above and beyond their home owner's policy.

If that's the case, i think it would be far more ridiculous for them to say that the damage was all done by wind (which they would need to do, not having flood coverage) than for the insurance company to say it was all done by water (which in the end they didn't, paying for some of the wind damage) in this particular hurricaine.

Again, just my assessment, and i certainly don't have all the facts I'm sure they got jobbed by Nationwide in some way, and it certainly doesn't seem like Nationwide was "on their side."

 
At 11:34 AM , Blogger skirt said...

I'm with Jeanne, isn't large amounts of water implicit in the definition of hurricane? Technically, the high winds are what moved the water into the house (that and faulty levees/government policies), aren't they?

Either way, this is just another reminder of why I hate American capitalism and the way that we consider corporations to be persons. Thanks for adding to the list of reasons to hate our fucked up systems Sarge.

 
At 5:06 PM , Blogger ayatollah assahola said...

goblin-

Dickie Scruggs was involved with the big tobacco litigation. However, your assesment of flood insurance is a bit naive. I went to the premiere of Spike Lee's documentary last night, and it touched on this. What the insurance companies actually did/do is undersell flood insurance to people, and give them the impression that between their homeowner's and minimal flood policies they would be made whole again. But when adjustors went out to assess damage, they ended up completely fucking people in the way damage was classified. The point is that no matter how/much what type of insurance was purchased, these companies were never in a million years going to pay off on these claims, even though good people had paid their claims on time for, let's say, 50 fucking years.

 
At 6:06 PM , Blogger Little Gordie said...

I trust Assahola on this one, Doomgoblin, and have little doubt that all the insured in hurricane country are being fucked, but I must say I strongly agree with (and am in some way enthralled by) this utopian notion of insurance companies being precluded from turning a profit.

Good lord, the very idea of modern "insurance" (especially pertaining to healthcare) in all honesty makes me so angry I fear for the safety of any walkabout claims adjuster I happen to meet. And my grandfather was an adjuster for an auto insurance. He hated it so much he forced all his sons to be lawyers.

 
At 1:14 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

The expectation that if you give a bunch of money to a large corporation, that they will under any circumstances, give that money back to you, is asinine. They won't. What in the world would make people think that they would?

 

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