Quake Insurance Agency Gets OK to Keep Witness Off Stand

The administrative law judge in ongoing hearings on earthquake insurance rates has ruled that state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush can legally keep his own expert off the stand if he doesn’t like what the expert would say.

Judge Andrea L. Biren, in a written opinion, refused to either independently subpoena the expert, Robert Hunter, or to order the Insurance Department to produce him for a second time at the hearings--turning down a motion from a consumer advocate.

Hunter, former Texas insurance commissioner and a noted national critic of the insurance industry, said in his initial testimony in May that California homeowners were being charged 30% too much for quake insurance and that the coverage was poor.

Since then, the California Earthquake Authority has ordered rates reduced by an average 11%. But when Hunter sought to testify further, Quackenbush refused to let him.

Quackenbush said through a spokeswoman Tuesday: “Bob Hunter has expert actuarial credentials, and Bob Hunter’s job is complete at this time. We are pleased with the judge’s ruling in this matter.”

Biren noted that the motion from consumer advocate Selwyn Whitehead of the Economic Empowerment Foundation to hear Hunter again came at a late stage of hearings that have “gone on for a very long time.”

“Given that the opinion evidence sought is duplicative and weak, and that it is sought late in the case, the court declines to force the department to produce its own witness to espouse a position at odds with its theory of the case,” Biren added.

Whitehead said Tuesday she remains convinced that the state Insurance Department is being “sneaky and underhanded” in keeping Hunter from testifying again.