Posted on 10/29/2011 7:03:01 PM PDT by CedarDave
A Bernalillo County jury’s $12 million judgment this week against Progressive Insurance Co. was “very reasonable,” according to attorneys representing the family who sued.
Lawyer Janet Santillanes said that among the evidence jurors heard during the six-day trial was that Progressive altered its computer records 11 days after a Nov. 4, 2002, accident to make it appear the Vigil family did not have coverage at the time of the single-vehicle crash that was at the center of the case.
The company contended the policy lapsed about 90 minutes before the crash that killed one man and hospitalized five other passengers. Jurors also heard that Colleen Vigil called Progressive twice — two weeks before the crash and the day before — and was assured her policy was valid, with no payment due until Nov. 15, Santillanes said in a telephone interview with the Journal on Thursday.
She said Progressive’s policy is to record all conversations with policyholders, but the recordings of Colleen Vigil’s calls either were lost or never made.
A Bernalillo County District Court jury granted the Vigil family $11.7 million in punitive damages designed to punish Progressive for bad faith, and a few hundred thousand more in compensatory damages and for pain and suffering.
“The jury also heard evidence that Progressive’s profits are $3.8 million a day and (the company) had 11,700,000 policies in effect in 2010,” Santillanes said. “So the amount of damages to a multi-billion dollar corporation for a case that took nine years was very reasonable.”
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
9 years to settle this case? Unreal. Families suffer at the loss of loved ones, and then spend maybe 15% of their lives fighting an insurance company?!? If they had to go through this just for an auto insurance issue, imagine how bad it is going to be once government takes over health care.
Progressive Insurance is running constant TV ads during every commercial break today on TLC.
I’m trying to watch a military show about the Gulf War but Progressive keeps annoying me.
Screw those commies. Tell a friend about their leftist owners.
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