Category: Class Action

A court in Missouri has reached a momentous ruling pertaining to COVID-19 business interruption claims. According to a news report, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Bough for the Western District of Missouri ruled that business income loss due to the coronavirus might be covered under standard property and casualty policies, as long as the claimant can prove direct physical loss. …Read the rest »

Twenty lawsuits have been combined into a unified federal class action lawsuit against short-form video app TikTok over allegedly harvesting data from users who are mostly children and secretly sending that information to China. According to an NPR news report, dozens of minors through their parents are alleging that the video-sharing app collects information about their facial characteristics, locations and close contacts and quietly sends that data to servers in China. …Read the rest »

Hampshire House, the owner of several restaurants in Boston, including the famous Cheers bar featured in a TV show by the same name, is suing its insurance providers over denied business interruption claims it filed in response to the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns. According to The Boston Globe, the company has been navigating estimated losses in the millions of dollars. …Read the rest »

Walmart Inc. has been accused in a proposed class action lawsuit of violating California’s privacy law by failing to protect consumer data from an alleged hack. According to a Bloomberg news report, customers face significant injuries and damages such as having their data on the dark web as a result of a breach the complaint says occurred, the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California states. …Read the rest »

Oaklandish, a popular California clothing brand known for its Oakland pride apparel, is suing its insurance provider for denying pandemic-related coverage. According to a report in The Mercury News, Oaklandish joins as one of the latest businesses to sue its insurance provider. Like many retailers statewide, Oaklandish was required under state laws to shut down during the mandated stay-at-home order, which took effect mid-March. …Read the rest »

Apple customers who bought certain previous iPhone models can now submit claims for about $25 per phone as part of the company’s settlement of a class action lawsuit that accused the company of slowing down older devices. According to a CNN Business news report, the settlement, which was announced in March, applies to customers who purchased the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6sPlus, 7, 7 Plus, or the iPhone SE before Dec. 21, 2017 and experienced performance issues. …Read the rest »

Microsoft Corporation’s LinkedIn programmed its iPhone and iPad applications to divert sensitive information without users’ knowledge, according to a class action lawsuit filed in a California federal court. Bloomberg News reports that the apps use Apple’s Universal Clipboard to read and siphon the data and can draw information from other apple devices, according to the complaint that was filed in San Francisco federal court. The privacy violations were discovered and exposed by Apple and other independent program developers, the lawsuit states. …Read the rest »

Minor league baseball teams are the latest to sue insurance companies for failing to pay business interruption insurance. According to a USA Today news report, like thousands of other companies across the country, these teams and their vendors believe they are entitled to a payout because they dutifully paid insurance premiums and could not have foreseen the nationwide shutdown. …Read the rest »

A Berkeley-based home and garden store has filed a lawsuit against its insurance company for not honoring its business interruption coverage. According to a Berkeleyside news report, The Gardener has been located in the Fourth Street shopping district for 36 years. The owner of the store filed the claim against Ohio Security Insurance Company after facing serious financial harm because of the closure of her stores in Berkeley, San Francisco and Healdsburg. Like all retailers, the store was forced to shut down temporarily following the statewide shelter-in-place orders to stop the spread of the coronavirus. …Read the rest »

Farmers Insurance is facing a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court over a business interruption claim the company reportedly denied on the same day it was filed. According to a report in Insurance Business Magazine, a franchise of Northridge-based The Great Frame Up, which is a national chain of framing stores, filed the lawsuit after its business interruption claim was denied over the phone.

The class action alleges that Farmers Insurance is summarily denying any claims for loss of business income made by small businesses as a strategy to dissuade those small businesses from pursuing litigation. The lawsuit also states that this is not the first time the insurer has employed this tactic. Farmers apparently tried to employ the same strategy back in 1994 after the Northridge earthquake.

Denial Without Investigation or Assessment

Under California insurance law, those who are insured are entitled to a “fair and thorough investigation of claims.” But the lawsuit says Farmers chose to deny this claim without even taking a good look at it. The franchise was one of many “non-essential” businesses in the state of California ordered to close on March 19 by the state government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s spread. Since the lockdown, the store says it has not made a single sale.

The complaint states the store had purchased a uniform business owner’s policy, which alleged to cover the government lockdown. The franchise also maintains that its policy has an “additional coverages” clause that covers businesses’ incomes should a business suffer losses due to “the necessary suspension of your operations during a period of restoration.”

The franchise reported a claim to Farmers on April 8 over the phone and the insurer immediately denied it. Farmers also sent a written denial to the store the following day. When the store hired an attorney to look into why the claim was denied with any investigation or evaluation, Farmers allegedly refused to cooperate and provided no justification for the denial.

Suing Your Insurer Over a COVID-19 Claim

At Bisnar Chase, our business interruption lawyers believe there are plenty of avenues you can take like filing a COVID-19 business interruption lawsuit if your claim has been denied. Especially when a claim is denied instantaneously, it raises a red flag, telling you that your insurance company tossed it out without doing their due diligence in investigating it.

As a law firm that has fought insurance companies on behalf of injured clients, we know the game insurers play. We know they’ll attempt to deny claims and lowball claimants. They make their profits by paying out as little as possible. We believe that business owners should be supported and lifted up during these tough economic times. No company should be forced out of business because of unpredictable and uncontrollable circumstances. Contact our COVID-19 business interruption claim lawyers for more information about pursuing your rights.

Source: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/farmers-insurance-denies-business-interruption-claim-the-same-day-it-was-filed-faces-lawsuit-223955.aspx