STATEMENT OF REP. GENE TAYLOR IN RESPONSE TO 5th CIRCUIT ANTI-CONCURRENT CAUSATION RULING:

This decision reinforces my conviction that Congress needs to enact federal insurance reform. The states and the courts have failed to protect homeowners and taxpayers from fraudulent insurance practices.

The multiple peril insurance provision in H.R. 3121, the House flood insurance reform bill, would offer coastal residents the option to cover both wind and flood risk in one policy. The policy will cover hurricane damage without requiring homeowners to hire lawyers and engineers to divide the wind damage from the flood damage. People who lose everything will not have to endure years of delay only to have a court rule that windstorm insurance does not cover wind damage.

During floor consideration of H.R. 3121, the House passed my amendment to prohibit insurance companies that contract with the flood program from using anti-concurrent causation language to exclude coverage of wind damage simply because there also is some flooding.

I urge coastal residents and businesses to contact Senators and demand that they approve the House provisions to protect policyholders and taxpayers.

State Farm has insisted that its anti-concurrent causation language excluded coverage of all wind damage where there was any flooding, even if the flooding occurred hours later, and with no regard to the severity of the wind damage or the flood damage.

This practice violates State Farm’s contract with the National Flood Insurance Program. State Farm has a fiduciary responsibility to represent federal taxpayers when adjusting a flood claim, and has an obligation to provide a proper adjustment of combined wind and water losses. State Farm said that wind coverage was excluded in thousands of cases, but not once did they prove that all the damage was caused by flooding. In each case, a proper adjustment as required by the NFIP contract would have apportioned the loss between wind damage and flooding.

Every time State Farm invoked the anti-concurrent causation provision, it put its own interests ahead of federal taxpayers and stuck taxpayers with the bill. In some cases, the flood program was billed for wind damage that a fair adjustment would have billed to State Farm. In other cases, federal taxpayers provided home repair grants, FEMA trailers, rental assistance, subsidized loans, and special tax deductions for wind damage that should have been covered by State Farm.

Why would anyone in a hurricane-risk area ever buy another policy from State Farm? When Gulf Coast residents buy insurance, the one thing we are most concerned about is a major hurricane. Thousands of us paid decades of high premiums to State Farm for full windstorm coverage. We also bought federal flood insurance from our State Farm agents, for which the agents receive commissions and the company receives generous payments for its administrative expenses. We bought all the insurance that our good neighbors advised us would provide full hurricane coverage. Now we know that it is impossible to buy State Farm insurance and know that your damage will be covered.

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