CBS News Reports on BG Trial Victory Against State Farm: “State Farm Accused of Shortchanging Customers”
For counsel interview and other media inquiries contact: Joe Carey at 304.549.3286 or joe@careystrategiccommunications.com
CBS News featured our landmark class action lawsuit against State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company in a MoneyWatch segment, reported by consumer correspondent Ash-har Quraishi. Lead counsel Brian A. Glasser is featured, along with our client.
Five years ago, Rose Chadwick—the lead plaintiff in this case and our courageous client—lost her car in a total-loss accident. She submitted a claim to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, the insurance company she had for 30 years. Unbeknownst to her, however, State Farm undervalued her car by using a computer program that reduced her car’s value by over five hundred dollars. State Farm then underpaid Ms. Chadwick, just as it did with tens of thousands of other Arkansas customers based on this computer program. Ms. Chadwick sued State Farm on behalf of all of them. Ms. Chadwick described to CBS News that she trusted her insurer of over three decades: “… that’s what I pay them for, to be fair with me.”
At trial, a unanimous Arkansas jury delivered a verdict against State Farm, finding that the insurer breached its contract when it deployed a valuation scheme to systematically underpay approximately 37,000 Arkansas policyholders whose vehicles were declared total losses. The jury also decided that Ms. Chadwick and the class members were owed damages in the amount that State Farm underpaid on each of their vehicles.
As Brian Glasser states in the segment: “The computer program that State Farm used to calculate the replacement value of the car did it systematically unfairly.” Moreover, Mr. Glasser states: “State Farm moves billions of dollars to people for their broken cars every year and insurance companies around America do similar numbers, so … these computer programs that calculate the value of your replacement vehicle affect billions of dollars every year.”
The trial team for Ms. Chadwick and the class included Brian A. Glasser as lead trial counsel along with Bailey Glasser lawyers David L. Selby II, Practice Group Leader of the firm’s Mass Torts Practice Group; partner James Kauffman, a leading consumer protection lawyer; associate Allison Bruff; and paralegal Paula Sontos.
Our co-lead counsel are Hank Bates and Lee Lowther of Carney Bates & Pulliam, PLLC, a leading firm in this area of class action law. Counsel in the case also included Ed Normand of Normand PLLC, another leading consumer protection lawyer.
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Watch the full CBS News report here:
