What a dick move by Progressive

[MIAdragon]

http://mattfisher.tumblr.com/post/29...-to-defend-her

**This did not happen to me or my family, just passing this BS along**

My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court

I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.

I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.

Now, I don’t discount the possibility that Katie was at fault in the accident, but it never really looked that way. The only witness who gave a statement on the day said that Katie had the light, etc. The totality of the evidence left some room for argument, but that will be the case any time there’s a catastrophic car accident that doesn’t happen underneath an array of video cameras.

One indication that the case was pretty open-and-shut was that the other guy’s insurance company looked at the situation and settled with my sister’s estate basically immediately. Now, because the other driver was underinsured, that payment didn’t amount to much, but my sister carried a policy with Progressive against the possibility of an accident with an underinsured driver. So Progressive was now on the hook for the difference between the other guy’s insurance and the value of Katie’s policy.

At which point we learned the first surprising thing about Progressive: Carrying Progressive insurance and getting into an accident does not entitle you to the value of your insurance policy. It just pisses off Progressive’s lawyers. Here I address you, Prospective Progressive Insurance Customer: someday when you have your accident, I promise that there will be enough wiggle room for Progressive’s bottomless stack of in-house attorneys to make a court case out of it and to hammer at that court case until you or your surviving loved ones run out of money.

Which is what Progressive decided to do to my family. In hopes that a jury would hang or decide that the accident was her fault, they refused to pay the policy to my sister’s estate.

Out of a sense of honor, and out of a sense of the cost of my sister’s outstanding student loans, my folks opted to try to go after the money through legal channels. At which point they learned another delightful thing. In Maryland, you may not sue an insurance company when they refuse to fork over your money. Instead, what they had to do was sue the guy who killed my sister, establish his negligence in court, and then leverage that decision to force Progressive to pay the policy.

Now my parents don’t harbor much venom for the guy who killed my sister. It was an accident, and kicking that guy around won’t bring Katie back. But kicking that guy around was the only way to get Progressive to pay. So they filed a civil suit against the other driver in hopes that, rather than going to court, Progressive would settle. Progressive did not. Progressive made a series of offers (never higher than 1/3 the amount they owe) and then let it go to a trial.

At the trial, the guy who killed my sister was defended by Progressive’s legal team.

If you are insured by Progressive, and they owe you money, they will defend your killer in court in order to not pay you your policy.

The trial was a real shitshow for my parents, and I did not love it either. As it happens, the jury did find that the other driver was negligent, which, if justice or decency are priorities for Progressive, will result in them finally honoring Katie’s policy. At this point, I hope you’ll forgive me if I wait for it to actually happen.

Don’t buy insurance from Progressive. Not only will you be paying the salaries of people who put my family through the wringer (really a smaller wringer that Progressive attached to the main wringer of my sister’s death), but also when the chips are down, your money will have bought you nothing but a kick in the face.

Today (August 14) Progressive made an announcement about the case. This is my statement in response.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by BIG_DADDY

Only you would come in and defend the nobility of of Progressive in a thread like this.

Ahem.

http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showp...1&postcount=13

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by chop

I have a Progressive issue also. I used to use them for insurance. I bought full coverage on a truck that I had an accident in. The accident cost several thousand dollars to fix but progressive said they would not pay because it was my fault (I was going around a corner on the highway, hit a patch of ice and rolled my truck in a ditch). They would not pay the claim.

WTH? Isn't that why you have full coverage insurance? In case you get into an accident that is your fault?

[Skyy God]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

I deal with insurance stuff with unfortunate frequency. While I truly don't care much for them, it's easy to see why they become such a-holes on some things.

EVERYONE thinks they're a piggy bank to be tapped whenever the least thing goes wrong. Eventually anyone si going to get a paranoid mentality, which isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you, right?

So 100 people come after you on questionable claims, and they fight them all, and we hear the sob story about the legitimate ONE (out of the hundred) where they probably shouldn't have fought. Meanwhile, 99 scam artists...

Progressive and their ilk love your 99 scammers to 1 legit claim ratio.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by petegz28

State Farm. Been with them for years for both home and Auto and our Rental as well. Never had a problem with them about anything and they have been nothing but nice, and very responsive when we have had to make a claim.

Had 'em forever. They're a little more expensive, but they're a hell of a lot less headache. I've always been treated with the utmost respect by them and have never had to do more than present a receipt for a replacement helmet after my bike wreck or an estimate after I got rear-ended. They know that scraping up nickles isn't worth losing market share so they do their damndest to keep their customers happy.

That said, if millions were on the line (we don't know, but this couldn't have been a small balance), they'd probably put up something of a fight. It's certainly not a pleasant thing to have happen, but it does make some sense from their perspective. I've seen plenty of SF's file notes and ultimately they do some very very detailed vetting before denying a claim. Progressive may not do as much, but if they denied this claim, it probably wasn't just spite - they probably had what they felt was a legitimate reason.

The only distinction between SF and Progressive here may be that SF is a mutual company not a corporation so it answers to its policyholders rather than stockholders. In the end, however, any insurance company (or really any business at all for that matter) is going to try to protect itself and I can't really fault them for it.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by KChiefer

If you wanna argue whether they should be on the hook then fine. But wouldn't the part where they said they didn't provide counsel to the killer even though his lawyer declared himself a lawyer with "Progressive Advanced Insurance Company" tell you there's serious malfeasance afoot?

I could almost guarantee that Progressive intervened in the action as an interested third party. Their rights were going to be essentially decided and due to the principles of issue/claim preclusion, if they didn't fight it then, they wouldn't be able to fight it at all (res judicata stuff).

This guy's a layperson, not a lawyer. He doesn't realize what is actually going on so he's making shit up.

Progressive didn't defend the 'killer', they entered on behalf of Progressive and defended their rights in the action. I'd be willing to bet that they actually ended up as a party in the case. Ultimately if they didn't they'd have almost certainly lost their right to challenge the underlying liability of the 'killer' in this case and would've had 3 legs kicked out from under their stool on any later litigation to protect their interests.

This is a blogger that doesn't understand the law or what he's looking at.

Progressive did what any responsible business would've done.

[Fish]

Progressive might not have done anything legally wrong... But this is a good example of how and why insurance companies don't give one single **** about people. Insurance companies aren't in the business of helping people manage accidents and property loss. They're in the business of making money, just like everyone else. They'll do things like this and more every time they're legally able to. It shouldn't be a surprise.

Sad and unfortunate all the way around.

[Mr. Laz]

Twice Progressive found a way to screw me over years ago and avoid paying for car damage.

once the accident occurred on private property(apartment complex) so it became a 'no fault' claim because apparently full police stuff doesn't happen for non-injury collisions on private property. Both cars were covered by Progressive. So they basically got to choose who's fault it was and who got full coverage. Of course they chose the other person's POS car at a fraction of the cost even though she was on the wrong side of the road. Leaving my brand new and much more expensive repair to get screwed.

Other time, apparently they have a rule in their millions of lines of small print that says if there is a crime involved in any capacity they don't have to pay shit for anything. It doesn't matter if the 'crime' was complete bullshit. The Police ended up giving us both tickets so i get screwed. There were witnesses that said the other guy was driving like a maniac but it didn't matter. Ticket of any kind = no pay for anything

I won't ever go back

[Skyy God]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

Progressive might not have done anything legally wrong... But this is a good example of how and why insurance companies don't give one single **** about people. Insurance companies aren't in the business of helping people manage accidents and property loss. They're in the business of making money, just like everyone else. They'll do things like this and more every time they're legally able to. It shouldn't be a surprise.

Sad and unfortunate all the way around.

My $.02 is that, for whatever reason, insurers often do a terrible job of assessing potential liability. I think it's expected that a jury would hammer Progressive for, essentially, representing the driver against their own policyholder. Blame MD law if you want, but it doesn't sound like Progressive was taking that into account in their settlement offers.

[Saul Good]

If people spent 1% of the energy they use raging against the machine to actually educate themselves on these issues, I don't know what there would be to talk about on here.

It's like an ignorance contest around here.

[KCUnited]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

If people spent 1% of the energy they use raging against the machine to actually educate themselves on these issues, I don't know what there would be to talk about on here.

It's like an ignorance contest around here.

Several years ago I worked for an insurance company and there was this guy with a large Rage Against The Machine poster in his cube. I always wanted to go up to him and be like 'we are the machine, buddy.' I think they fired him.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

If people spent 1% of the energy they use raging against the machine to actually educate themselves on these issues, I don't know what there would be to talk about on here.

It's like an ignorance contest around here.

I swear to God, every day becomes an exercise in trying to introduce people like Bump and Just Not Gettin' It to adult problems while trying to educate them without showing them pictures of happy kittens hanging from branches.

CP seems to have developed a sub-culture of willful institutional ignorance.

Everyone's right - Progressive should've just sat back and let some broke idiot essentially act as their attorney in litigating what was almost certainly an extremely high-dollar lawsuit. That's exactly how this would've ended up had they done nothing because the law would not have allowed them to re-challenge the tortfeasor's underlying liability in a subsequent action. That's going to be prohibited by the principals of claim preclusion and res judicata.

This isn't even a close call. Progressive absolutely did the responsible thing here and it has absolutely nothing to do with their 'hatred' of people.

[Mr. Flopnuts]

And it's settled.

http://cnnmoney.mobi/wk_snarticle?ar...=cnnm_business