Hurricane insurers accused of
discriminating against minorities

By TRAVIS REED

The Associated Press
ORLANDO, Fla.

A lawyer is accusing several Florida home insurers of systematically defrauding hundreds of minorities out of millions of dollars in claims from 2004's devastating hurricanes.

Alan Garfinkel said Tuesday most of his 300 clients speak limited English and were targeted by the companies as customers who could be cheated out of large chunks of their claims. He said about a dozen are still homeless and others are living beneath tarps and in mold−infested rooms because they haven't gotten fair claims.

Filed late last week and Monday, the lawsuits are individual, not class action, and name several carriers, including Florida giants Allstate and State Farm. Garfinkel said he expects to file about 200 similar complaints before month's end.

"Unequivocally, people that speak English as a second language are being paid less. A lot less," he said. Garfinkel said his clients got on average 60 percent less than they deserved _ and he expects the same through Katrina's destructive Gulf Coast path. "This is part of what insurance companies do. They may deny it, but I think we're going to prove otherwise," he said.

State Farm spokesman Jose Soto said he couldn't comment on specific cases and hadn't heard of the suits, but his company fairly investigates all claims. "We have a lot of procedures set up for people who disagree with the claim process," he said. "Sometimes you can't make everybody happy, but we do try our best to settle these claims." An Allstate spokesman said Tuesday he hadn't heard of the complaints and could not comment. About 30 percent of Garfinkel's clients are white and seeking protection from alleged insurance company retaliation like dropped policies and raised premiums, he said.

Garfinkel, a natural disaster specialist, said he's taking a big risk by paying out−of−pocket for scores of independent experts and court papers against several large companies with deep legal benches. Since he took the cases on contingency there's no guarantee the firm will win anything back, he said. "A group of the lawyers in our firm have gone over this for weeks and said, 'These are the ones that are really bad and we have to do something,'" he said.