An informed reader who has dealt with State Farm suggests that the comments here have it wrong– that the reader’s experience of State Farm makes it seem likely that State Farm would insist on a resolution like the motion to dismiss as a part of a settlement– that the case appears to have settled (I’ll note myself that the cancellation of yesterday’s pretrial conference for a trial looming in early October suggests that the court has been informed the case is pretty certainly resolved, even though all claims have not been dismissed). Referring at the end of this to the abortive Katrina class action settlement involving Scruggs that Judge Senter refused to accept, the writer notes:
The only logical explanation for the dismissal of punitives is that SF required that in order to settle the case. I see how SF works, and given all the media exposure of McIntosh, they probably wouldn’t settle without getting something huge like this.. ya know, kinda like when Scruggs got all the money in exchange for agreeing to sell off everybody else in a class action? No other way would Merlin make such a statement. It stinks, but that’s how Katrina litigation has become.
The writer closes with a prediction that seems pretty clearly right: “My prediction is that soon there will be an announcement about settlement. People will assume it’s cuz of the dismissal of punitives, but actually it’s the other way around.” RogerWilco has made a similar observation in comments.
That analysis would completely explain what happened yesterday, and be consistent with Merlin’s press statements which would freely paraphrase as saying all is not as it appears (“’I would be very hesitant for people outside the lawsuit to try to read too much into what it means when parties dismiss causes of action or take other actions within this lawsuit,’ said William F. “Chip” Merlin Jr.”).
The reader’s suggestion is essentially that yesterday’s motion was designed, as a part of settling the case, to provoke exactly the reaction I had– this is a stunning development. Which it was. But what we can’t fully see is the actual fact of what happened “inside” the case.
I’m fairly persuaded by this gloss on what happened in the case, although have no way of being certain. While saying that doesn’t make me have second thoughts about the two posts yesterday about the motion, it does make me think that some of the speculation or pondering in comments (by me and others) may have been too far ahead of the evidence (the informed reader says the comments were “off base”).
NMC at FOLO
9/9/8
