Farmer’ Insurance Joins growing list of Bad Faith Insurers

Farmer’s Insurance was recently hit with a $130,000,000.00 jury verdict in a class action law suit filed on behalf of a group of 76,000 Oklahomans. The plaintiff’s were Farmer’s customers in Oklahoma who made claims from June 1994 through mid-2007. The homeowners claim that Farmers, a subsidiary in Los Angeles of Zurich Financial Services AG, deliberately underpaid their claims.

The suit apprently was originally brought by a single policyholder Bill Burgess who sued Farmers in 2001 over a policy on his home. Mr. Burgess felt he had been underpaid on his claim for wind and storm damage. The lawsuit was changed to a class action after lawyers found information in the insurer’s claim files indicating that denying payment for overhead and profits was a “widespread practice,” plaintiff’s attorney said.