State Farm has been sued AGAIN over losses from Katrina. This time, the allegation is that they used a doc in a box, or in this case, an engineer in a box. The allegation is that the company started with the conclusion that losses were not covered and told their engineers to come up with a report to fit the conclusion.
The general rule is that you start with the expert report and use that to make your conclusion. If State Farm did this backwards, not only are the losses covered, but they have acted in bad faith, in my opinion.
It is quite simple: the insurance company takes your money and promises to pay if you have a covered claim. You are only buying a promise. If you cannot trust that promise, and if the insurance company is going to try to find ways out of that promise, than you have bought nothing.
I will definitely be following this case for you, but for those of you who have claims and the insurance company sends out an expert or experts, you need to talk to an attorney and decide if hiring your own expert is worthwhile.