Gulf Coast awash in anger

BILOXI, Miss. — A Gulf Coast homeowner claims State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. coerced him into signing a statement that he is satisfied with its handling of his claim after Hurricane Katrina, even though it only paid for a fraction of the damage to his home.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, Thomas McIntosh of Biloxi claims State Farm obtained his “false and fraudulently induced ‘statement”’ in an attempt to quash media reports about the company’s handling of claims following last year’s hurricane.

State Farm only paid McIntosh and his wife $36,228 for their claim, citing an engineering report that blamed Katrina’s storm surge for most of the more than $1 million in damage to his home.

However, McIntosh says the Bloomington, Ill.-based insurer never told him that State Farm’s engineers initially concluded that wind, not water, was responsible for most of the storm damage.

A Federal judge in Mississippi ruled in another case that standard homeowner’s insurance policies cover wind damage but not flood damage.

Hundreds of policyholders on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast are suing State Farm and other insurance companies for refusing to cover billions of dollars in damage from Katrina’s rising water, including wind-driven storm surge.

State Farm spokesman Phil Supple said McIntosh’s allegations are “absolutely contrary to the way we do business.”

“We dispute these characterizations of our behavior,” he said, noting that the company hadn’t seen the lawsuit.

Forensic Analysis and Engineering Corp., the Raleigh, N.C.-based firm accused of issuing conflicting reports for McIntosh’s claim, also is named as a defendant in his lawsuit.

McIntosh, who met with State Farm attorneys in August, says he didn’t understand the implications of the conflicting engineering reports when he agreed to sign a statement that he was “satisfied that (my) adjustment and payment under the State Farm policies was done correctly.”

McIntosh says he learned about the conflicting reports from Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s office, which is investigating allegations that State Farm and other insurers fraudulently denied claims after Katrina.

Zach Scruggs, one of McIntosh’s attorneys, said his client signed the statement because he worried that State Farm would cancel his insurance coverage if he didn’t cooperate.

“It was certainly an intimidating atmosphere for anybody,” Scruggs said of McIntosh’s meeting with State Farm attorneys.