Declarations

Poe Suit

“Florida’s insurance consumers were forced to foot the bill when the Poe Companies became insolvent so that policyholders could have their claims paid. We will aggressively pursue any opportunity to recoup additional funds to reduce the assessments levied against Florida’s insurance consumers.”

—Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, after filing a lawsuit against the officers, directors and affiliates of Atlantic Preferred Insurance Co., Florida Preferred Property Insurance Co. and Southern Family Insurance Co. (Poe Companies). The Department of Financial Services sued to recover damages in excess of $100 million from the now-insolvent insurance companies.

Truth and Politics

“If these politicians think they can intimidate me, the message to them is to strap up, the truth is going to come out.”

—Alabama insurance executive John W. Goff on being indicted by a federal grand jury, blaming his legal problems on political retaliation by Republicans, including the governor, a politician the executive once supported but later sued. A federal grand jury indicted Goff on 26 counts of mail fraud, conspiracy and embezzlement. Goff is accused of fraudulently collecting workers’ compensation insurance premiums for two companies and not sending about $3 million to them.

Not Well

“We had to back out the driveway into the flames. The whole road, everything, was on fire that morning. Every time we hear something, we jump now.”

—Tennessee resident Charles Daugherty, commenting on an oil well explosion that occurred just 60 yards from his mother’s front door. It melted the siding on her manufactured home and transformed the landscape into charred stumps and pools of oily water.

Sisters

“The payments Scruggs made to the Rigsby sisters bears no reasonable connection to any work they performed or to any expenses they incurred in testifying. These payments were clearly improper.”

—U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. in Gulfport, Miss., as he disqualified two key witnesses from testifying against State Farm or their former employer, a firm that helped adjust Katrina claims. Senter’s April 4 rulings cited improper payments that their attorney Richard Scruggs, who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to bribe a judge, made to Cori and Kerri Rigsby. Scruggs hired the sisters as consultants and agreed to pay them $150,000 apiece after they gave him reams of internal State Farm records that they secretly copied while they were employed by E.A. Renfroe & Co.

Raining Wheels

“When I crawled up there and saw it pushing through the roof, I thought, ‘I must be dreaming,'”

—Mark Brown, a Monroe, Ga. mechanic when he saw the wheel from a helicopter poking through his roof. Federal Aviation Administration officials told Brown the wheel plummeted to earth from a helicopter owned by the Loganville-based Forever Green Landscaping. The wheel is part of equipment used to haul the helicopter around the landing pad during maintenance. Officials said the equipment should have been removed before flight.

Topics Florida