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Woman catches STD having sex with dude in his car. Sues Geico for $5.2M.

crash_davis

By crash_davis
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crash_davis

crash_davis 23154

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File this in the WTF category. I'm sure the resident lawyers will have fun arguing over this story.

 

TLDR: She bangs a dude in his car. She may not have know that he had an STD. Article is poorly written in that regard. Anyway she gets STD. She sues his auto insurance, Geico, and is awarded $5.2M in arbitration.

 

https://www.pilotonline.com/nation-world/vp-nw-std-car-geico-insurance-20220608-jh2o27ahybcyxck3ol66wm2qx4-story.html

 

GEICO to pay $5.2M to woman who says she caught STD in former partner’s car

By Bill Lukitsch

The Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Court of Appeals has affirmed that an insurance company must pay a $5.2 million settlement granted to a Jackson County woman who claimed she unwittingly caught a sexually transmitted disease from her former romantic partner in his car.

In an opinion issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel found that the judgment entered against GEICO General Insurance Company through earlier arbitration proceedings was valid.

The insurance companies sought to undo the action, claiming errors were made in Jackson County Circuit Court and the settlement agreement was not done in line with Missouri law.

According to court papers, the woman, identified in court records only as M.O., notified GEICO in February 2021 of her intention to seek monetary damages, alleging she contracted HPV, the human papillomavirus, from an insured member in his automobile.

She contended the man caused her to be infected with the STD despite being aware of his condition and the risks of unprotected sex. The insurance company declined the settlement, sending the case to arbitration.

In May 2021, the arbitrator found that the man and woman had sex inside his vehicle that “directly caused, or directly contributed to cause” the HPV infection.

The man was found liable for not disclosing his infection status and the woman was awarded $5.2 million for damages and injuries to be paid by GEICO.

The insurance company filed motions seeking a new hearing of the evidence and for the award to be tossed out, saying the judgment violated the company’s rights to due process and the arbitration agreement was unenforceable.

The company appealed after those requests were denied. The three-judge panel tasked with reviewing the case found that the lower court did not make a mistake by denying the company’s motions, saying GEICO did not have a right to “relitigate those issues” once damages had been determined and a judgment was entered.

Judge Tom Chapman concurred in a separate opinion, though, saying he believes GEICO was offered “no meaningful opportunity to participate” in the lawsuit and existing law “relegat(es) the insurer to the status of a bystander.”

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AUS-97HORN

AUS-97HORN 11874

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its an odd story. but my only "favorite" part of the story is the fact that Geico sent this, per THEIR contract to arbitration, got an absolutely gobsmacking judgement against them... and then tried getting the arbitration judgement overturned multiple times.

How many times has their arbitration team low balled or completely fucked over their customers in a dispute by forcing arbitration on their customer.... only to finally get karma'd right back in this story (which admitedly sounds like a total horseshit story)

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Dahobbs

Dahobbs 17802

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6 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

its an odd story. but my only "favorite" part of the story is the fact that Geico sent this, per THEIR contract to arbitration, got an absolutely gobsmacking judgement against them... and then tried getting the arbitration judgement overturned multiple times.

How many times has their arbitration team low balled or completely fucked over their customers in a dispute by forcing arbitration on their customer.... only to finally get karma'd right back in this story (which admitedly sounds like a total horseshit story)

This is the correct read on the story.

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31676

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15 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

This is the correct read on the story.

Well, I did some research.  Apparently the fucker and fuckee submitted their claim to arbitration independently of anything GEICO did, in part to preserve privacy, and demanded that GEICO indemnify the fucker for $1M, the policy limit for the auto and an umbrella policy.  It also looks like they may have sandbagged the arbitration to trigger GEICO's indemnification liability.

GEICO filed a coverage DJ and apparently lost that, also protesting that the private arbitration deprived them of any ability to participate.  https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ksd.135859/gov.uscourts.ksd.135859.49.0.pdf

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Dahobbs

Dahobbs 17802

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1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, I did some research.  Apparently the fucker and fuckee submitted their claim to arbitration independently of anything GEICO did, in part to preserve privacy, and demanded that GEICO indemnify the fucker for $1M, the policy limit for the auto and an umbrella policy.

GEICO filed a coverage DJ and apparently lost that, also protesting that the private arbitration deprived them of any ability to participate.  https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ksd.135859/gov.uscourts.ksd.135859.49.0.pdf

Hmm, the story I read said that Geico sent the claim to arbitration. I guess I actually need to read more into it. Sigh. 

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Bevo

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9 hours ago, AUS-97HORN said:

its an odd story. but my only "favorite" part of the story is the fact that Geico sent this, per THEIR contract to arbitration, got an absolutely gobsmacking judgement against them... and then tried getting the arbitration judgement overturned multiple times.

How many times has their arbitration team low balled or completely fucked over their customers in a dispute by forcing arbitration on their customer.... only to finally get karma'd right back in this story (which admitedly sounds like a total horseshit story)

Which was faster, the call to the in-house attorneys to appeal or the call from accounting to increase rates?

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conVINCEd

conVINCEd 21474

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Getting a strong insurance fraud vibe here. One doesn’t pick up the phone and randomly get sold a $5M umbrella policy, and if someone has a legitimate need for that coverage, the odds that they would choose GEICO to fill that need are something like .00001%. That’s beyond an agent’s binding authority at most insurance companies.  I think the fucker and the fuckee were in cahoots.

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AUS-97HORN

AUS-97HORN 11874

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2 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

Getting a strong insurance fraud vibe here. One doesn’t pick up the phone and randomly get sold a $5M umbrella policy, and if someone has a legitimate need for that coverage, the odds that they would choose GEICO to fill that need are something like .00001%. That’s beyond an agent’s binding authority at most insurance companies.  I think the fucker and the fuckee were in cahoots.

theres a lot more to the story that wasnt in the original post. 

The main reason this was covered by Geico is because she was "hurt" in the vehicle, will need lots of future medical expenses and she basically filed this like she was in a car accident... and guess what, at least in MO, Geico did NOT have an exclusion written into the insurance contract that included STD infections as something that couldnt be filed against (you can be damn sure they updated their policy in the last few days country-wide)

But Geico was given notice by the woman's atty WELL before the case ended up in arbitration that she intented to go after geico for the insured's 1M policy.   Geico read the notice and they decided that the lawsuit was against something they didnt have to worry about (specifically the STD infection).

The long story short is Geico fucked up, they had at least 2 chances to be a participant in the lawsuit and passed thinking it didnt pertain to their coverage, and only once they found out it went to arbitration did they start caring- which was too late according to both the original arbitration decision AND the appeals court.

I dont know exactly where the $5M coverage number kicked in because thats not listed in any of the stories I have read, but that may have been a home/auto/life/ umbrella policy that they wrote where shes hitting the auto and umbrella at the same time. 

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crash_davis

crash_davis 23154

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29 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

theres a lot more to the story that wasnt in the original post. 

The main reason this was covered by Geico is because she was "hurt" in the vehicle, will need lots of future medical expenses and she basically filed this like she was in a car accident... and guess what, at least in MO, Geico did NOT have an exclusion written into the insurance contract that included STD infections as something that couldnt be filed against (you can be damn sure they updated their policy in the last few days country-wide)

But Geico was given notice by the woman's atty WELL before the case ended up in arbitration that she intented to go after geico for the insured's 1M policy.   Geico read the notice and they decided that the lawsuit was against something they didnt have to worry about (specifically the STD infection).

The long story short is Geico fucked up, they had at least 2 chances to be a participant in the lawsuit and passed thinking it didnt pertain to their coverage, and only once they found out it went to arbitration did they start caring- which was too late according to both the original arbitration decision AND the appeals court.

I dont know exactly where the $5M coverage number kicked in because thats not listed in any of the stories I have read, but that may have been a home/auto/life/ umbrella policy that they wrote where shes hitting the auto and umbrella at the same time. 

Thanks for the thorough summary. What I got out of this is that insurers now need to detail every possible way that a person can be harmed to be excluded from their coverage. Before this case, I don't think anyone thought that Geico could be sued because some chic got an STD in the insuree's vehicle. And then I don't think anyone would believe the settlement is $5.2M. But here we are.

I'm anxious to see the list of exclusions and see how creative the Geico legal team is.

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elfenix

elfenix 34385

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53 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

theres a lot more to the story that wasnt in the original post. 

The main reason this was covered by Geico is because she was "hurt" in the vehicle, will need lots of future medical expenses and she basically filed this like she was in a car accident... and guess what, at least in MO, Geico did NOT have an exclusion written into the insurance contract that included STD infections as something that couldnt be filed against (you can be damn sure they updated their policy in the last few days country-wide)

But Geico was given notice by the woman's atty WELL before the case ended up in arbitration that she intented to go after geico for the insured's 1M policy.   Geico read the notice and they decided that the lawsuit was against something they didnt have to worry about (specifically the STD infection).

The long story short is Geico fucked up, they had at least 2 chances to be a participant in the lawsuit and passed thinking it didnt pertain to their coverage, and only once they found out it went to arbitration did they start caring- which was too late according to both the original arbitration decision AND the appeals court.

I dont know exactly where the $5M coverage number kicked in because thats not listed in any of the stories I have read, but that may have been a home/auto/life/ umbrella policy that they wrote where shes hitting the auto and umbrella at the same time. 

this was pretty great lawyering by her lawyer. 

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conVINCEd

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23 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Thanks for the thorough summary. What I got out of this is that insurers now need to detail every possible way that a person can be harmed to be excluded from their coverage. Before this case, I don't think anyone thought that Geico could be sued because some chic got an STD in the insuree's vehicle. And then I don't think anyone would believe the settlement is $5.2M. But here we are.

I'm anxious to see the list of exclusions and see how creative the Geico legal team is.

STDs, along with acts of war, have been in there for a long time.  All companies, except GEICO in Missouri.

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woohorn

woohorn 1131

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The main reason this was covered by Geico is because she was "hurt" in the vehicle, will need lots of future medical expenses...


Serious q: is hpv really that bad if erryone in US gets it?

From google: “HPV infections are very common. Nearly everyone will get HPV at some point in their lives. More than 42 million Americans are currently infected with HPV types that cause disease. About 13 million Americans, including teens, become infected each year.“
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TwiceHorn

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15 hours ago, conVINCEd said:

Getting a strong insurance fraud vibe here. One doesn’t pick up the phone and randomly get sold a $5M umbrella policy, and if someone has a legitimate need for that coverage, the odds that they would choose GEICO to fill that need are something like .00001%. That’s beyond an agent’s binding authority at most insurance companies.  I think the fucker and the fuckee were in cahoots.

Apparently, the policy limits were $1M, with the umbrella.

It does appear to be a collusive effort to get the chick paid $1M.  They chose an arbitration to litigate his liability ostensibly for privacy purposes, but it also conveniently hides the sandbagging that went on, and kept GEICO out of it.  It appears from the recitation of facts in the federal coverage lawsuit that the arbitration ruling was issued one day after it was filed.

Quote

Again, GEICO says that it did not know at the time that M.O. and M.B. submitted M.O.’s claim against M.B. to arbitration on May 17. (ECF 43-5, at 4.) And, the next day, the arbitrator awarded M.O. a $5.2 million arbitration award against M.B. On May 24, M.O. filed suit in Jackson County Circuit Court, asserting claims against M.B. for negligence and negligent inflection of emotional distress. (ECF 43-4, at 4.) It was at that time that GEICO says it first learned about M.O. and M.B.’s § 537.065 agreement and the $5.2 million arbitration award that M.O. can collect, if at all, only from GEICO.

 

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crash_davis

crash_davis 23154

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14 hours ago, elfenix said:

this was pretty great lawyering by her lawyer. 

 

8 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

The whole scheme is pretty diabolical.  

International visitors who spend time in the US are amazed by how many lawyer commercials there are on TV. Definitely a US centric bragging right.

 

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