Holden v. Farmers Insurance Company

We hold insurance companies accountable when they cheat or rip-off their policy holders.  Maybe you haven’t heard this saying:  “Insurance Companies love to take your premiums but they hate to pay claims.”  In my experience, I see it all too often.  

Laura Holden had a fire in her apartment.  She enjoyed scrap-booking.  Lots of her arts and craft supplies and her bed burned up in the fire.  But she had renters insurance.  All’s good, right?  Well, not so much.  Her insurance company took her premiums and now she had a claim.  Did the insurer do the right thing?  Well, not so much.

Here was the issue:  Laura paid Washington State sales tax on all of the things she lost in the fire but Farmers refused to compensate her for her total losses which included that sales tax.  Her claim for the lost sales tax was small and most lawyers wouldn’t waste their time fighting about it.  But I’d had enough.

I took her case as a potential class action against her insurer.  Why? Because it was the right thing to do. There was definitely no guarantee of success.  The trial judge agreed with us:  “Pay the sales tax.”  The Court of Appeals disagreed with our position in a 3 to 0 vote against us.   So, I appealed to the Supreme Court, argued the case, and won on a 6-3 vote, setting precedent for every person in the State of Washington.

Now, if you sustain a fire loss and lose your stuff in the fire, every insurer in this state will pay you for the fair market value of your losses plus sales tax.