NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Courts already inundated by a wave of litigation against insurance companies over damage from Hurricane Katrina are bracing for a last-minute barrage of lawsuit filings as a deadline nears.
Thousands of Louisiana home and business owners are expected to sue their insurers, both in federal and state courts, in the days leading up to Katrina’s second anniversary Wednesday.
Many of the cases involve policyholders accusing companies of shortchanging them for wind damage from the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane. Insurers say their policies cover damage from wind but not a hurricane’s rising water.
The deadline for filing suit was originally last August, but state lawmakers extended it. Many home and business owners weren’t taking any chances last year and thousands filed suit in the days leading up to Katrina’s first anniversary.
State and court officials expect long lines to form on the eve of the storm’s second anniversary.
“Common sense suggests there might be,” said Loretta Whyte, head clerk for U.S. District Court in New Orleans.
The longest lines haven’t formed yet. New Orleans lawyer Wiley Lastrapes Jr. didn’t have to wait long Thursday at Orleans Parish Civil District Court to file suits against insurers on behalf of nine clients.
“I didn’t want to be here at a time when it’s going to be chaos,” Mr. Lastrapes said.
Some lawyers are warning clients that tomorrow or Wednesday is the deadline for filing suit, but insurance department officials say policyholders may have at least an extra day.
Lawmakers apparently passed two laws that gave conflicting dates for the extended deadline, which the federal courts also follow. One version set Thursday as the deadline for filing Katrina suits, while another set it for Saturday. The deadline for filing lawsuits over Hurricane Rita damage is Sept. 25 or Oct. 1.
State Rep. Timothy Burns, a Mandeville Republican who co-sponsored one of the laws, said policyholders should err on the side of caution and file by tomorrow.
“I would urge everybody not to wait,” Mr. Burns said. “Don’t take the chance.”
In Mississippi, where Katrina damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes, property owners have another year to file suit against insurers. More than 1,200 cases have been filed in federal court in Gulfport, Miss., and 449 of those cases remained open as of Tuesday.
More than 6,500 Katrina-related cases, mostly involving insurance disputes, have been filed in federal court in New Orleans. More than 2,800 have been settled or dismissed, Mrs. Whyte said.
“Nobody wants to go to court,” said lawyer Joe Bruno, who represents thousands of policyholders. “We want to resolve these claims with the insurance companies, and we have been resolving them every day.”
Phil Supple, spokesman for State Farm Insurance Cos., said Louisiana policyholders filed more than 200,000 claims with the company after Katrina. Less than 1 percent of those have resulted in lawsuits, he added.
Only a handful of cases have been tried by a judge or jury. The first verdict in Louisiana for a federal Katrina insurance case came in April, when a jury ordered Allstate Insurance Co. to pay $2.8 million to a Slidell man whose home was destroyed by Katrina.
State courts also are fielding thousands of Katrina insurance cases. In New Orleans, 1,963 cases were filed in Civil District Court by Katrina’s first anniversary. At least 1,063 have been filed since then, the court’s chief clerk said.
Meanwhile, Wednesday is the deadline for filing claims against the federal government and Army Corps of Engineers over damage from failure of levees and flood walls in Katrina’s aftermath.
Corps spokesman Vic Harris said about 326,000 claims have been filed for billions of dollars. In March, thousands of residents visited the Corps’ New Orleans headquarters to beat an earlier deadline for filing such claims.
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