New Trial Ordered After State Farm Withholds Key Report

A new trial has been ordered in Arlington in a case in which a man was injured by a police vehicle. The police officer driving the vehicle and her employer were excused from the case due to sovereign immunity and the plaintiff’s only recourse was to seek a judgment against his UIM carrier, State Farm.

In this case State Farm plays two separate roles. First, as UIM carrier State Farm defended the case in court as if it were the police officer’s insurer. And second, State Farm serves as a provider of benefits to the plaintiff through its MedPay division. Many auto insurance policies include some amount of medical payments (MedPay) that can be paid out to cover medical bills following an accident. Sometimes the insurance company will have its MedPay unit do investigations to find out what injuries and care are related to the accident and which are not.

In the case at-hand the MedPay division of State Farm was conducting an investigation into the plaintiff’s injuries and hired a psychologist to assess the extent and causation of the claimed brain injury. The psychologist completed a review of the plaintiff’s file, confirming the existence of an injury and that it was caused by the accident, for State Farm but only on the final day of the trial. By the time the plaintiff had been provided with the report, which the plaintiff’s counsel labeled as a “game changer,” it was too late.

A judge ruled that this was enough for a new trial because the evidence should have been provided to plaintiff’s counsel as soon as State Farm received it. State Farm argued that there liability department did not know that the MedPay division had such a report until after the trial and therefore was not in violation of procedure. Plaintiff’s counsel then argued that State Farm is one legal entity and that one department possessing a document is the same as all departments.

The new trial was granted pending further motions.

Plaintiff’s counsel is attorney Joseph Cammarata.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.