Washington Injury Law Blog

Attorney Jonathan Stein author of the California Personal Injury and Insurance Blog has an interesting recent post about Allstate. It appears that Allstate thinks a Missouri judge and the Missouri Supreme Court do not know what the law is. This seems to be Allstate’s position in a bad faith case in Missouri. The bad faith case arises from a rear-end car accident that an Allstate customer caused and Allstate refused to pay the claims its customer owed for years. 

According to Joe Lambe of the Kansis City Star Allstate was ordered in September to turn over documents that plaintiff’s attorneys allege may show that in the 1990’s Allstate set up a claims payment systems that short changed clients while earning Allstate huge profits. The MO judge set the fine for Allstae’s refusal to produce the documents at $25,000 per day. In November the MO Supreme Court agreed with the judge, yet Allstate continues to refuse to produce the documents.

This is where it gets good. Allstate’s attorney told the MO judge that Allstate had a principled difference they’re “not able to resolve until somebody says what the law is.” Everyone generally knows it’s the courts who tell us what the laws is. The courts decide what the law is and we follow what it says, it’s that simple.  Allstate’s attorney then told the judge Allstate would not turn over the 12,500 documents without protective order sealing the records from public view. You have to wonder what is Allstate fighting so hard to hide?

The judge in response told Allstate he had told them what the law was. But Allstate seems to have decided the judge was wrong, the Mo Supreme Court is wrong, and the law doesn’t apply to them. Apparently, Allstate lives by some other set of laws that only apply to them. 

As Jonathan Stein said in his post Allstate is fighting awfully hard to keep these documents secret and I’ll bet that if made public they would strike a might blow to Allstate and its image of “good hands.” We’ll have to see how this turns out.