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Progressive Insurance back killer driver to avoid payout

In June of 2010, [Matt Fisher's] sister Katie was killed in a car accident. She had a green light and the other driver ran the red — fault was clear. The other driver’s insurance company settled with Katie’s estate immediately, but because the driver was underinsured, the payment was not much. Based on the Progressive policy Katie had purchased, Progressive was required to pay the difference.

Then they refused to pay. Then they defended the at-fault driver to avoid having to pay.

Fuck me….

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4 Responses to "Progressive Insurance back killer driver to avoid payout"

hazmoid says:

August 16, 2012 at 2:19 pm

So the impression I get is that, in this case, the lawyers provided to the at-fault driver by his insurance company, also happen to work for Progressive? This is a case where an assumption of cause may have been overstretched.

Mind you, I think Progressive should have paid out and then chased the offending driver and his insurance company for the balance. Would have been good PR ("Paid out our claim without a quibble")and may even have made them a profit. Besides which, the ethical thing would be that having made the investigation and received the police report they should have been satisfied that the other party was at fault. They took the premiums so they assume the risk that they would be unable to claim the costs from the at-fault party.

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Spectra says:

August 16, 2012 at 3:26 pm

No, you miss the point. The lawyers "provided to" the at-fault driver were provided BY Progressive purely in an attempt to have fault shifted to the person they insured, thus avoiding having to pay out.

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hazmoid says:

August 16, 2012 at 4:43 pm

Apparently Progressive put out a statement that they did not provide the legal team that supported the at-fault driver. I am quoting from the comments, so I have no link to back this up.

"According to Progressive, they didn’t represent the defendant in the case. He was represented by his own insurance company, Nationwide."
http://www.progressive.com/understanding-insurance/entries/2012/8/14/statement_on_fisher.aspx
However when you look at the link above in the comments again it is clearly shown that Progressive had a very large hand in the defendants defence, and were in fact, listed as a party to the defence.
I stand corrected, this insurance company makes "lower than a snakes belly" look positively stratospheric.

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saige says:

August 16, 2012 at 4:46 pm

My old man had something like this happen. I was in the car at the time too. Basically this woman suddenly decided to reverse full bolt and my dad turned to avoid her but she turned in the same direction and slammed into us. No one was serious hurt.

Everything showed she was at fault, but it went to court as her insurance company didn’t want to pay. Apparently her father somehow produced a witness that said my father was to blame. They saw us ‘apparently smack into her’. They were on a balcony at the time. The thing is, I remember looking at where that person was saying they were and they weren’t there. To make matters worse, the judge seemed bias to our insurer. I couldn’t even believe it at the time at how fucked up it was.

Luckily, it didn’t cost us anything, so the our insurer had to do the paying.

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