Insurance Company's Best Kept Ugly Secret:

by Layla Fanucci
(California)

ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY’S BEST KEPT UGLY SECRET

Car Hits Twelve-Year Old Girl While Standing On Sidewalk

Our daughter was injured as a pedestrian in a serious car accident while standing on a sidewalk with a friend when an underinsured driver jumped the curb while making a left turn and hitting our daughter straight on, flying her up in the air where she landed on top of the car hood and was slammed to the ground as the car continued on driving down the road without any regard to our daughter’s well being. We learned from her doctors that she had sustained a brain injury resulting in cognitive impairment in addition to other physical injuries. Directly after the accident, she had to relearn simple math and forgot how to walk home from school as one of many examples. The accident occurred in 1997, and she has made substantial progress through great effort on her part and a relentless desire to get back what she had lost in the accident.

Allstate Denies Injury

Allstate contended that we had fabricated our daughter’s injury and we had convinced her that she had suffered a brain injury despite medical testimony to the contrary. Despite Allstate’s lowball offer of $15,000 to settle our daughter damage claim, the arbitrator awarded our daughter $1.4+ million dollars in damages for the injuries she sustained. Although Allstate represents that you are in “Good Hands,” they offered only $15,000 on a $1,400,000 injury under our Uninsured Motorist coverage. During the arbitration proceeding, Allstate was even able through their crafty lawyers to get their own expert to change his testimony whereby he had written a prior report that indicated that my daughter had suffered a closed-head injury and had suffered some degree of unconsciousness as a result of being hit by a vehicle as a pedestrian. Again, my daughter was hit by a vehicle, thrown on the vehicle’s hood, and was slammed to the ground as the driver drove off down the street without any regard to hitting my daughter. The Allstate expert changed his testimony during the arbitration hearing by indicating that my daughter did not suffer a loss of consciousness, which is often a material element in supporting a brain injury, since the force of a car hitting a pedestrian did not necessarily constitute sufficient force to render such an injury. These facts alone should speak volumes about what I consider Allstate’s deceptive insurance practices in denying claims to their own customers. This is precisely why Allstate has one of the lowest ratings of all insurance companies in the United States.

Inadequate Insurance Coverage

Although I was advised repeatedly that the Personal Umbrella Policy that I purchased in the amount of $1,000,000.00 applied to my daughter’s injury under the Uninsured Motorist provisions, Allstate prevailed in subsequent lawsuits through the appeal process, after we had won two prior verdicts, by convincing a jury that no such coverage ever existed with respect to Allstate’s Umbrella policy. Allstate never offered such protection although they advised me on several occasions it was my fault for not reading cover to cover my lengthy policy with more loop holes than Swiss cheese. Instead of $1,250,000 of protection, we only had $250,000.

Umbrella Policies and Uninsured Motorist Protection-Buyers Beware

When I purchased my Personal Umbrella Excess Liability Policy from Allstate Insurance Company, I was advised that the $1,000,000 million of additional Umbrella was in addition to my underlying $100,000 of Uninsured Motorist coverage, which was later increased to $250,000, as well as to my bodily injury portion. Subsequently, when I asked to increase my Uninsured Motorist coverage, I was advised by Allstate that all I had to do was simply increase my Umbrella from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000, which I did in order to protect my family in the event one of us were injured by an uninsured or underinsured motorists. Uninsured motorist coverage can be obtained at very little expense, and the protection to one’s family is of most importance due to the high number of uninsured and underinsured motorists in the State of California. This is precisely why certain insurance companies do not advise their insureds to get additional uninsured motorist protection, since they do not want to pay large claims for injuries sustained by an uninsured or underinsured motorist.

California Law

California only requires by law that a driver carry a minimum of $10,000 of bodily injury coverage per person. For example, the woman who hit my daughter was only required by law to have $10,000 in insurance to cover my daughter’s injuries which were in excess of $1.4 million. An umbrella policy offers substantially more liability protection in amounts of $1,000,000 or more at very little additional cost. In my situation, at the time I believed I purchased the polices, I only had $100,000 in Uninsured Motorist coverage when I was led to believe I had an additional $1,000,000 of coverage on top of that.

The uninsured limits were eventually increased to $250,000 only because Allstate now required higher underlying limits for the Personal Umbrella to apply. The Allstate agent testified in court that Allstate would never advise you to obtain more uninsured motorist protection once you met the minimum of underlying coverage for the Umbrella to apply since he would never advise you that the Umbrella did not apply (“sneaky”), again leaving their insureds subject to substantial risk and exposure if hit by an underinsured motorist.

Under California State law, an insurance agent is not required to advise their customers that they should obtain increased uninsured motorist coverage nor are they required to advise them that their particular Umbrella Excess Liability policy is not linked to the uninsured motorist portion. However, certain insurance companies doing business in California offer an umbrella excess liability linked to the uninsured motorist protection, such as Farmers Insurance Company. State Farm Insurance Company used to link the two but stopped doing so in 1996. I contacted a State Farm insurance agent on January 21, 2010, and asked if the two were linked, and she indicated she was not sure but would contact her underwriter and get back to me, whereby she was informed that State Farm no longer offered Umbrella protection linked to the Uninsured Motorist protection as of 1999. I then asked her what the maximum of uninsured motorist coverage one could obtain through State Farm, and she did not know off the top of her head, but after looking at one of her policies she indicated $250,000, which is not adequate in my opinion.

When an Umbrella Policy purchased from Farmers Insurance Company (at least as up to a year ago when I last checked), the insured is offered an option of having the umbrella tied to the uninsured motorist portion by checking a box.
However, Allstate has no such election or coverage. It is also possible to go outside of the “Good Hands” Allstate Company and obtain a stand-alone umbrella policy which is linked to the uninsured motorist coverage.

Our Agent Mike Baldwin Goes Outside of Allstate to Get Protection Not Offered by Allstate

In fact, our agent with Allstate, Michael Baldwin, did exactly that -- he went outside of Allstate and obtained such an Umbrella policy from State Farm that was tied to the Uninsured Motorist policy in order to protect his family. He admitted in a court of law that he never advised any of his clients over his 20-year career with Allstate that (1) the Allstate Umbrella policy was not linked to the Uninsured Motorist coverage, and that, (2) an insured can go outside of Allstate to obtain an inexpensive Umbrella policy that was in fact linked to the Uninsured Motorist coverage as he did. When I obtained an Umbrella policy, he had already gone out of Allstate to obtain such protection for his family that was never offered to me, since he testified that it would have been too confusing for me to understand this concept and this would be a recipe for disaster. The recipe for disaster were not having Umbrella protection for my daughter’s injuries, a concept that totally escaped Mr. Baldwin. I had referred Mike Baldwin numerous clients including my mother and other friends. I also lectured at his church on estate tax matters.

For full story contact lfanucci@comcast.net

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