Shingles are something you never want to have, unless they're on the top of your house or on the outside of your law office.
Joe Cantu is fortunate not to have shingles, at least not on his roof, but he does have cement tiles up there, and some of them apparently got damaged when the March 29, 2012 hailstorm hit his Hidalgo County home.
A federal jury recently found in favor of State Farm Lloyds in a suit brought by a Hidalgo County resident claiming the company failed to fully compensate him by paying to replace his cement tile roof following the March 29, 2012, hailstorm that swept through the area.
Houston attorney Steve Mostyn must have been feeling cocky when he attended a hearing held by the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence back in 2010. The hearing, attended by tort reformers and trial attorneys, was called to address the problem of barratry in our state.
Speaking of a three-pronged approach to combatting swindling . . .
Last week, we were doing just that, pointing out that “prosecuting swindlers is the third prong of an obvious three-prong solution, the first being a willingness on the part of defendants to fight back against fraud, and the second being a determination among judges to reject unreasonable claims.
DALLAS - A hailstorm plaintiff represented by the Mostyn Law Firm recently filed a motion seeking exemption from mediation, accusing State Farm Lloyds of bad faith dealings for essentially not agreeing to a settlement that is worth three times the value of the insured’s home.
Dallas commercial insurance attorney Steven Badger charges that some trial lawyers try to intimidate insurers into settling unjust claims, using a “scare tactic” that “can amount to insurance fraud.” Says Badger, “Lawyers and their teams of experts will significantly increase the alleged cost to damaged items and often add entirely new damage claim components that were never part of the original claim submitted to the insurer.”
Nearly two years after their Hidalgo County home was damaged by a hailstorm, Armando and Aurora Martinez turned to the Mostyn Law Firm in Houston and sued their insurance provider, State Farm Lloyds, alleging breach of contract. State Farm fought back, filing a motion for summary judgment in June, stating that at no time after the company closed the claim did the couple disagree about the amount paid to them, federal court records show.
Several groups, including the world's largest business federation, recently filed amicus briefs in two actions pending before the Texas Supreme Court, arguing trial lawyers are abusing discovery to force insurers to settle even frivolous lawsuits. In November, State Farm Lloyds filed two petitions for writ of mandamus with the high court, seeking to overturn a district judge’s decision to impose a protocol for the production of electronically stored information (ESI for short) in a hailstorm la
