The filing Monday is the latest development in a federal lawsuit that charges State Farm defrauded the federal government through a complex scheme by wrongfully denying insurance claims and shifting the burden for the storm’s damage to the taxpayer-funded National Flood Insurance Program. But State Farm attorneys have said the suit should be dismissed because they said it’s based on false charges. The company is seeking monetary damages.
The Rigsbys first made their allegations public in August 2006. Missouri-based attorney Anthony L. DeWitt, who is among those representing the whistleblowers, said Monday the two were only doing what’s right when they reported the alleged offenses.
“They blew the whistle on what they believed was wrongdoing,” DeWitt said.
Attorneys for the Rigsbys want the State Farm counterclaim dismissed.
On the charge the two stole confidential information, attorneys for the Rigsbys deny that “information about a criminal enterprise and rampant fraud against the United States taxpayer are in any way commercially sensitive, confidential or private information.”
In response to a motion that says the sisters and the attorneys wrongfully gained access to the files, lawyers for the Rigsbys, from the firm Graves Bartle & Marcus, responded strongly. They said the company’s attorneys were telling “outright lies” and they represented a “corrupt corporation” and have “little regard for the the truth” or the reputations of those it attacks.
“It is unfortunate but hardly surprising that State Farm would resort to this strategy, given that it faces potential civil liability reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars and an ongoing criminal investigation regarding the handling of Hurricane Katrina claims,” the document said.
“We would suggest that the counsel for the Rigsbys review the contents of the sworn deposition by their own clients,” Fraser Engerman, spokesman for State Farm, said in response to the charges.
The Rigsbys’ attorneys also assert that every person has the right to communicate information to law enforcement.
The Rigsbys say what they did actually is in keeping with a contract they had signed with State Farm and its vendors that required them to “exercise an undivided loyalty” to State Farm customers and also guides them to act in a “legal and ethical manner,” according to the document filed Monday.
Sun Herald
4/29/8
Magnolia Tribune
