Warner: Outrageous jackpot justice continues to flourish in WV
Release from West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office:
By W.Va. Secretary of State Mac Warner
“The way this State handles insurance settlements needs to be completely redone,” Secretary of State Mac Warner said, in response to a Charleston Gazette-Mail article: ‘Four secretary of state employees settle wrongful firing suits against Mac Warner for $1M’ (See article link below)
In an August 31 letter (attached), Warner excoriated the process and payouts when he first learned of how these lawsuits were resolved.
Warner called on state legislators to study the current structure, a process that gives no decision-making authority to agency heads. A review of publically available data from the Board of Risk and Insurance Management (BRIM) shows they have averaged $12.5 million per year over the past 20 years paying out these types of lawsuits.
“It’s a process with no oversight, where the lawyers keep getting richer off the deep pockets of the state, the state’s insurance carrier and the taxpayers,” said Warner. He asks legislators to take a deep dive into why the State is paying millions in commissions to agents, placing total authority and control of case handling in the hands of unaccountable adjusters, and perpetuating an industry for trial lawyers and defense firms to get rich off taxpayer funded insurance costs.
“This is an issue that few know about, and when you do find out about it as a public official – the process does not allow elected officials to have a say in the outcome,” Warner said. Warner urges any legislative fix to give some degree of control over litigation to the state agencies and their agency heads. He also asks for claim determination authority to be removed from an independent board and placed under the direction of those answerable to voters.
Warner concluded, “The Legislature must give public officials the ability to make decisions on how lawsuits are resolved since we are ultimately responsible to the voters for the decisions we make – and I continue to stand by my decisions – even if the insurance company doesn’t want to.”
Editor’s note: Read the Charleston Gazette-Mail article on the lawsuit settlement: ‘Four secretary of state employees settle wrongful firing suits against Mac Warner for $1M’ — https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/cops_and_courts/four-secretary-of-state-employees-settle-wrongful-firing-suits-against/article_7a5494fd-7a8c-50e6-85b8-f16d2e110312.html
Editor’s note: See the August 31 letter: 8.31.18 Letter to BRIM
