Supreme Court Unfairly Favors Big Business Over Citizens

By Mark Schofield

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the American Gulf Coast. Over the days that followed, Americans viewed images of homes being destroyed, and lives being severely altered, as Mother Nature unleashed her wrath in Louisiana and Mississippi. As many as 1,836 people lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods, making that storm the deadliest United States hurricane since 1928. The storm also caused an estimated $81.2 billion dollars in damage.

In the months following Hurricane Katrina, residents of the Gulf Coast were subject to severe hardships. Many who had lost their homes in the disaster either relocated, or stayed behind to try and reassemble their homes, and their lives. However, many soon found that their own insurance companies would only add to their burdens, by denying claims made under homeowner’s insurance policies. According to these insurance companies, even if homeowners had purchased policies that included coverage for hurricanes, the damage to their homes was actually caused by flooding. Therefore, the insurance adjusters reasoned, unless a homeowner had purchased flood insurance, which is a separate insurance often not provided for in homeowner’s insurance policies, losses would not be covered.

Xavier University, along with a number of individual homeowners, challenged that line of thinking in a Louisiana State Court. Despite those exclusions in their policies regarding flooding, these individuals and Xavier University advanced the argument that the flooding was caused by the negligent design and maintenance of the levees in and around New Orleans.
Negligence that anyone who watched Hurricane Katrina unfold live on television could see. These Plaintiffs argued that their policies do not exclude coverage for an inundation of water caused by negligence.

Today, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case, effectively ending the chances these Plaintiffs will ever recover for their losses that resulted from Hurricane Katrina.

It is true that insurance companies are businesses, and that they are in the business of making profits. However, Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster unlike any this country had seen in almost 100 years. Thousands of individuals lost their lives, and billions of dollars in damage resulted. Yet in the end, individual homeowners are left holding the bag, as insurance companies walk away, leaving their policyholders behind.

Sadly, this is one of thousands of examples of insurance companies putting their profits over the interests of their policy holders. Every day in this country, an individual learns the hard way what the Plaintiffs in this case have learned: Insurance companies are looking out for their bottom line. State Farm is not often a good neighbor. You are not necessarily in good hands with Allstate.

It is stories like this that drive the attorneys at Goldberg, Finnegan & Mester to stand up for those individuals in their fights against insurance companies, be it the insurance company that denies an automobile accident claim, the insurance company that denies medical coverage or coverage for medical negligence, or the insurance company that denies coverage for the loss of a home or business (homeowner's insurance claims). If you have been injured and are trying to fight an insurance company, don’t do so on your own. Contact one of the
attorneys here at Goldberg, Finnegan & Mester for a free phone consultation.
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