Monday, February 19, 2007

The Red State of Mississippi

That's Red as in Communist Red.

What else do you call a state where the State Attorney General first re-writes existing legal contracts on insurance policies and then says he will sue a company if it stops conducting a specific type of business in the state?:
JACKSON, Miss. -- Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said Friday he will seek legislation aimed at blocking State Farm Insurance Cos. from refusing to write new homeowners and commercial policies in the hurricane-battered state.

He said the plan was modeled after actions taken by Florida and would require any company that writes automobile insurance to write homeowners policies as well.

"We're looking at a robber baron in the face that is trying to make an example of Mississippi," Hood said of State Farm.

State Farm, Mississippi's largest home insurer, said Wednesday it has had enough of the "untenable" legal and political climate in the state and would not write new homeowners and commercial policies in a state still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

The company said the suspension would begin Friday and continue until the business climate in the state was more palatable.

A spokesman for State Farm Insurance Cos. said the decision was due, in part, to the wave of litigation the company has encountered since the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.

Mississippi is the latest state along the hurricane-vulnerable Gulf Coast to at least temporarily lose an insurer.

State Farm has more than 30 percent of the homeowners policies and 8.5 percent of the commercial policies in Mississippi.
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