Local News in Brief : Insurance Firm Must Pay Man $5 Million
A retired Los Angeles sanitation worker has been awarded more than $5 million in damages in a bad-faith judgment against Farmers Insurance as a result of delays in settling a $6,500 automobile accident claim.
The award to C.J. Molett, 56, stems from a 1980 accident in which Molett’s car was struck from the rear by an uninsured driver, said his attorney, John C. Taylor. But Molett did not know that the attorney he hired to pursue an uninsured motorist claim was on a “top secret” list of 40 to 50 “select” attorneys maintained by Farmers, Taylor said.
These attorneys represented primarily minority plaintiffs, and each had between 40 and 50 claims pending against Farmers, Taylor said. Farmers paid Molett, who is black, $6,500 awarded in arbitration in 1983, and Molett then filed the bad-faith lawsuit to recover $750 in costs he incurred because the company didn’t settle his claim right away, Taylor said.
The jury found that Farmers acted with “malice and oppression” and awarded Molett $50,000 in compensatory damages and $5,006,500 in punitive damages.
A woman who identified herself as a partner of the attorney that represented Farmers said the law firm would not comment.
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