Louisiana Insurance Litigation Blog

Kenneth Feinberg, administer of economic damage payments for The Gulf Coast Claims Facility has paid out almost $4.5 billion, with $2.6 billion being payments from an emergency payment phase, to local businesses and personal claims along the gulf coast. Feinberg has utilized a quick-pay process to quickly settle the straightforward, non-continuing claims, awarding almost $1 billion in final settlements in four months of this year.

In the past two months, the GCCF has distributed close to $700 million for more complex claims that involved full review, analyzing, and documentation. The good news is that the average payment has been steadily rising in the past two months, from $16,000 to $20,000.

Since the first year anniversary of the spill this past April, Feinberg has granted an additional 15 percent of claimants, totaling 26 percent now, and made offers to nearly half of the 115,000 settlement-seeking claimants. Feinberg reports that many individuals and businesses are still submitting claims, even though the pace has drastically decreased in comparison to previous quarters. There is still time to submit a claim for your business or personal income loss, and it is important to correctly complete your claim with the necessary information and support to guarantee the greatest possible result.

Thus far, the GCCF has processed over 95 percent of the 300,000 claims filed before the end of May. Forty percent of those were deemed either deficient or ineligible. There are 54,000 claimants seeking final payment whom Feinberg considers eligible, and if they continues at this rate, all eligible claims will be paid off in the next four months. If the average payment stays the same, rather than increasing like it has been, $1.1 billion will be paid before November.

Continue reading " Gulf Coast Claims Facility Picks up the Pace in Processing Claims " »

Thursday June 9th 2011, Jack M. Weiss who was appointed by the Gulf Coast Claims Facility Administrator Kenneth R. Feinberg, and serves as the chancellor of the Louisiana State University Paul M. Herbert Law Center, appointed 25 “distinguished members of the legal community” to serve as the appeals judges on Gulf Coast Claims Facility appeal judgments. This grouping of “highly competent, respected and experienced,” retired federal and state judges, legal academics and professional mediators or arbitrators were selected from the directly affected areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. They will serve to handle the billions of dollars in claims against BP and the other companies involved in the 2010 rig explosion that poured hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, interrupting fisheries, businesses and tourism.

To file an appeal with the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, the claim must surpass $250,000 and must be presented to the GCCF no longer than 14 days after the Determination Letter has been issued to the claimant. The Panel of Appeals Judges will view and decide the outcome of your claim within fourteen days after receiving the file. It is vital that your form include an exhaustive listing of your claim and filed correctly in compliance with the GCCF. If you are business owner with a claim, or one affected by the oil spill, contact a knowledgeable attorney with the resources to handle large claims and one who will guarantee the greatest obtainable outcome.

Continue reading " Gulf Coast Claims Appeals Judges Appointed " »

If you have made a loss claim with your insurance company within the past seven years, there may be a file with your name on it, identified as your C.L.U.E. report. C.L.U.E., or Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, is a claims history database created by ChoicePoint, and it enables insurance companies to access consumer claims when they are underwriting or rating an insurance policy. The report contains not only the consumer’s claim information, including date of loss, type of loss, amounts paid, and a description of the property covered, but also personal information about the consumer such as name, date of birth, and policy number.

C.L.U.E. reports are mainly used when insurers underwrite and rate new policies, and when renewing a policy, insurers usually don’t even have to access C.L.U.E. reports because the information is already stored in their own database. In fact, the C.L.U.E. database is a subscription-based database, which means insurance companies have to subscribe to be able to access the information, so not all insurance companies submit their consumers’ information to be stored in C.L.U.E. reports. Additionally, even if your insurance company does subscribe to C.L.U.E., if you haven’t made a loss claim in the past seven years, you don’t have a C.L.U.E. report at all.

The problem arises when you realize that all the information in your C.L.U.E. report is being submitted by the insurance company, without your consent or knowledge, but the companies are protected to do so under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. So, inaccurate information may be listed in your report without your realization. Each consumer is allowed to request a single copy once every 12 months, and if there are any errors found, consumers can contact ChoicePoint directly to report the discrepancy. ChoicePoint then contacts the insurance company to request clarification; after 20 days without the company’s response, ChoicePoint will contact the company again to follow up. After 28 days without the company’s response, ChoicePoint will again follow up, and if, after 30 days, the company has still not responded, the questioned information will be removed from the consumer’s C.L.U.E. report.

Although you cannot access anyone’s C.L.U.E. account but your own, if you are considering purchasing property and would like to see the claims made on that property, you can ask the current homeowners to make a request for their own report.

Continue reading " The C.L.U.E. in You " »

For many of us, we have seen technology bloom at an amazing speed, progressing from radios to televisions, computers that filled rooms to ones that lay on our laps, and now to small and very powerful mobile phones. We rely heavily upon these tiny complex devices that reside in our pockets; they tell us the weather, news, how to get places, and, most importantly, they keep us connected to others around us.

Consequently, since technology has progressed, we now need advanced laws to protect our information from others. The main statutory protection, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, was written in 1986, well before the invention of the internet. The ECPA was primarily designed to prevent unauthorized government access to private electronic communications, such as writing, images, and data, and as we are all increasingly sharing our lives online, communicating and participating in e-commerce, we drastically need an update to modernize the ECPA. As Americans, we expect our personal and private information to be just that, personal and private. Most of us rely on computers, cell phones, and, largely, the internet to communicate, learn, and receive information, and what we view and discuss reveals a tremendous amount of information about our lives. This information needs to be protected.

At present, 82% of Americans own and use cell phones on a regular basis, and a rapidly increasing 40% of us own smart phones, capable of pinpointing our locations, browsing the internet, sending emails, and utilizing applications like Facebook and Twitter. Recently, Apple and Google appeared before the U.S. Senate to defend their mobile device location tracking policies, while Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) addressed the issue that Congress needs to take steps to enforce mobile privacy safeguards since mobile devices are only getting more popular.

Continue reading " Personal Privacy Pivotal in Developing New Laws " »