[StBernard] Louisiana Value Policy Law

[Westley Annis]

 In February, I approached a mediation between a mediatore, State Farm,
along with my lawyer and myself in conference. In a two hour confrontation,
State Farm was very "sympathetic" (and/or pathetic, perhaps) at what we had
experienced. However, my lawyer and I used the "landmark" court case in
Florida (Valued policy law) as a leverage to deal with the disagreement and
we dealt with where one leaves off and the other picks up to the value of
the coverages.

State Farm would not budge, beyond the return they say they can deal with
(to those who have State Farm, you can get back another $2450 or so as a
deductible return to you) and thus offered no leeway with an attitude that
this is all they can offer by way of the policy's legalities. Thus they
ignored the Florida's ruling about the recovery of wind damage over the
flood limitations.

My lawyer suggested it was a very inappropriate offer of mutual cooperation
and compromise in dealing with the loss., probably leading to legal action.
Besides this Florida case, the lawyers on both sides found it interesting to
note that since Katrina neither heard about a case or decision otherwise in
either's favor. I suppose my lawyer is waiting a little longer to the 1 year
litigation period (August 29th) to file due to the fact that perhaps at some
point in the next 5 months--a case might be brought before in a legal sense
to a ruling end.

Therefore, in this manner of thinking, there would be a Louisiana precedent
in which to approach my/our own litigation if needed. Having a trend/track
record of a win vs. the insurance companies would perhaps place us with
"ammunition" to go to war and have a chance of tacking the big-money guys
with fancy-suited counselors. I hope so. I'm fed up on being on the losing
end of life.

--jer--