State Farm’s Bad Faith Policies Exposed

In our work as attorneys specializing in Michigan’s No Fault Benefits Act, we have been battling State Farm Insurance Company for more than 20 years to make sure they pay our clients the No Fault benefits they are contractually and legally entitled to.  They have been extremely aggressive in their attempts to withhold payments and benefits and we’ve been working for months to publicly reveal their outrageous tactics to do this. Recently we were finally able to get a judge to remove a protective order that was long in place hiding what State Farm was doing to its customers and our clients.

Here’s what was happening.  In the 1990s, State Farm insurance company began using a plan called “Advancing Claims Excellence” (or ACE) to handle its customers’ auto accident insurance claims.  The ACE program outlined how State Farm could save as much as $30 million per year, by finding reasons to deny auto accident benefits to policyholders.  How did they do it?  By using lots of shameful tactics against their own policyholders such as:

• Questioning their customers about their claims before they have a chance to hire a Michigan accident lawyer;
• Hiring their own doctors to examine accident victims, and write reports saying there are no injuries related to the car accident
• Prolonging the process by refusing to settle month after month then insisting on a trial
• Offering their policy holders way less than the estimated value of a case during settlement negotiations;
• Dragging their feet and causing unreasonable delays cases, especially where the injured person is a child, because the case would likely lose value over time.

The ACE program allowed State Farm insurance adjusters to go to all kinds of lengths to deny payment of benefits like medical bills and wage loss. In fact, we learned the adjusters were actually trained to deny these claims by using very specific policies outlined in the ACE program.

My law firm sued State Farm and worked for months to get the protective order overturned and to show once and for all just how far State Farm was willing to go to deny their policyholders benefits and compensation.  We are very proud to say we succeeded and won this battle.  State Farm got away with this game for way too long and countless policy holders were forced to pay the price.  Enough is enough.  Stay tuned for more developments as we continue to fight this fight with State Farm or any other insurance company who so blatantly stands in the way of what accident victims need for their care, recovery and rehabilitation after an accident.

To obtain a copy of these ACE documents, which are about 80,000 pages in length, email Mike@855mikewins.com.

Content checked by Mike Morse, personal injury attorney with Mike Morse Injury Law Firm. Mike Morse is the founder of Mike Morse Law Firm, the largest personal injury law firm in Michigan. Since being founded in 1995, Mike Morse Law Firm has grown to 150 employees, served 25,000 clients, and collected more than $1 billion for victims of auto, truck and motorcycle accidents. The main office is in Southfield, MI but you can also find us in Detroit, Sterling Heights and many other locations.