I'm not quite sure what the implications of this are:
Judge Senter sends State Farm and Mississippi back to the table.
Basically, what this says is that Judge Senter doesn't believe the negotiated settlement to establish a fair process for assigning claims for payment.
More analysis on the flip:
The agreement doesn't seem fair to me based just on the brief description in the Clarion-Ledger.
Basically, State Farm has to reopen every claim it had in the three coastal counties where the client didn't sue them. It has to reconsider and make a new offer, and if the claimant doesn't like the offer, it goes to arbitration.
So, first of all, there seem to me to be many, many people here who are going to get money they never would have sought. Claims where State Farm did right by the policyholder the first time around will be reopened and reconsidered. And the subtext of the settlement seems to be "everybody better get more money." Well, there are two basic reasons why these plaintiffs wouldn't have sued. First, they could be too poor or in otherwise no condition to sue. The settlement appears to be just in that case. Second, they could be satisfied, in which case the settlement would CERTAINLY not be just. Why should State Farm have to pay more to people who already got an equitable settlement?
I can't believe I'm actually defending State Farm here, but the process for determining what claims to re-open needs to be more precise, and shut out claims where the policyholder was satisfied.
On the other side, Katrina didn't just hit the three coastal counties in Mississippi. There are people as far north as Laurel (almost 100 miles inland) that got screwed by their insurance company. This settlement essentially shuts them out of relief against State Farm.
Do I think Judge Senter did the right thing? I'm not sure, because I don't have all the information. But based on what I read in that article, I think sending the parties back to the negotiating table is exactly the right thing to do.