Katrina’s winds too weak to destroy Biloxi houses, State Farm claims manager says [The Sun Herald]

March 28--GULFPORT -- An engineer was showing bias when he concluded Hurricane Katrina's wind and wind-driven debris destroyed a North Biloxi home on the Tchoutacabouffa River, the engineer's boss said in videotaped testimony Wednesday in a fraud case filed against State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.

Attorneys for former insurance adjusters Cori and Kerri Rigsby played the testimony to help prove their case that State Farm inflated flood damage covered by federal flood insurance.

But State Farm attorneys, showing portions of the same video in the company's defense, brought out the perception of bias on the engineer's part to further the company's argument that its employees never intended to deceive the government. The videotaped testimony was from Robert Kochan, owner of Forensic Analysis and Engineering in North Carolina.

Forensic engineer Brian Ford inspected the home of Thomas and Pamela McIntosh, the subject of the Rigsbys' lawsuit. The Rigsbys are

suing State Farm for fraud and conspiring with engineering companies to commit fraud under the federal False Claims Act, known as the whistle-blower's law. The sisters say State Farm overpaid the McIntosh flood claim in order to minimize what the insurer owed for wind damage. The Rigsbys would be entitled to a portion of any money recovered for the federal government.

An eyewitness told Ford wind and wind-driven debris destroyed the McIntosh home before Katrina's storm surge hit, according to Ford's report. The report also noted a 5.5-foot water line in the house. Ford concluded wind destroyed the house.

Kochan said the report was incorrect. Based on photographs and evidence, he said, State Farm was right to order a second report. The second report, by a different engineer at Forensic, blamed flooding for destruction of the house.

Kochan said he talked with Ford after Ford wrote his report. Ford, Kochan said, broke down and cried when he described how Katrina's flooding had destroyed his daughter's home and a tree had hit his own house. Because Ford was upset for his own family and his neighbors, Kochan said, "I think he was biased."

State Farm flood claims manager Lecky King said she did not believe eyewitness reports that blamed a home's destruction on Katrina's wind and wind-driven debris.

"Based on all my years of experience," she said on video, "the winds that occurred on the coast were not blowing hard enough to blow a house down. The surge was very, very high, and it took those houses out. The same wind that was blowing along the coast was blowing three blocks in. All those houses stand .... The houses right along the water do not stand. That was surge."

A meteorologist the Rigsbys called to testify, University of South Alabama professor Kenneth Blackwell, testified winds at the McIntosh house reached speeds of 130 mph or more, but weather information was less solid in the first months after Katrina, when State Farm adjusted the McIntosh claim. Blackwell said Katrina had inner and outer eyewalls, the areas where storms are most intense, subjecting the house to battering winds for hours before water washed ashore.

State Farm paid flood policy limits of $250,000 on the McIntosh claim, offering $36,000 for wind damage. Forensic examined the house after the claim was paid to determine whether any more money was due for wind damage.

King said she fired the engineering firm, but it was reinstated and allowed to continue working for State Farm when it agreed to revisit McIntosh and at least one other claim where wind was originally blamed for destruction.

State Farm decided eyewitness reports would need to be corroborated by other evidence, such as weather data, King testified. She said the insurance company also set up a special investigative team to interview eyewitnesses, rather than having adjusters conduct the interviews. She said she had no contact with the interview team and did not know who was on it.

She also said State Farm ordered engineering reports on wind losses with flood damage, but later cancelled those reports because the insurance company had enough weather information in hand so adjusters could draw their own conclusions about what caused losses.

___

(c)2013 The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.)

Visit The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.) at www.sunherald.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services