Geico must pay $5.2 million to a woman who caught HPV while having sex in an insured car

That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

The insured party and the plaintiff agreed to arbitration between themselves. GEICO wasn’t part of that. The arbitrator found in the plaintiff’s favour, then the plaintiff filed suit to enforce the arbitration award.

GEICO applied to intervene and the trial court granted the motion to confirm the arbitration award and entered judgment against the insured. After doing that, it granted GEICO permission to intervene.

The timing there is important.

According to the appeal judgment, by the time GEICO became party to the proceedings, they were stuck with the findings and outcome of the arbitration as confirmed by the trial court.

GEICO was still able to file various motions claiming that the arbitration was all a sham and a scam but the trial court denied those.

ETA:. The part I don’t quite get is how any of this means GEICO has to pay out. So far all we seem to have is a judgment between the Insured and M.O.

Is there not another step needed where M.O. has to try to get the money out of GEICO?

If so, is that not where GEICO get to argue that their insurance doesn’t cover this kind of claim? Which they do seem to be doing according to the article.

I’d like to see the “federal court papers” the article refers to but of course they don’t bother linking to them. It was bad enough tracking down the appeal ruling. At least there they told us which court the case was in.

Further edit:

All I can find is this:

which would seem to indicate that the federal stuff was dismissed on jurisdictional issues. But the article says the federal case is ongoing so either they appealed or filed again somewhere else.

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That very much depends on the policy on the other car. Named driver only policies are very common, at least in the UK. Permissive use by another driver in that case depends on the driver’s insurance.

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And that use may be ‘third party only’ cover and less likely to be fully comprehensive. The other driver may drive your car and kill someone and your insurer may pay their estate some damages, but they may not pay to restore, repair or replace your car. Read the small print, people.

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Not how it works. As long as execs and shareholders are taking home millions themselves they don’t “have to” raise prices. They’re already charging the most and paying out the least they think they can get away with.

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No, Geico denied a settlement from the plaintiff and sent it to arbitration, thus they forced the issue. They didn’t like the arbitrator’s decision that their policy does cover this and they appealed it to court, which upheld Geico’s policy and requirement for arbitration.

See Cory’s thread on this (the part about Geico starts around tweet 37): https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1536002057840230400

WaPo has a bit clearer write up about the case: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/09/geico-std-car-sex-missouri-insurance/

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While I’m not a fan of Cory’s often reactionary and self-serving takes on things, in this instance he seems right on the money.

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I don’t know what Cory may have to say on twitter but the WaPo article is misleading.

It says the case was sent to arbitration after GEICO refused to settle the claim, which is correct but sort of implies GEICO was responsible for both - which it wasn’t.

From the opinion:

GEICO were not involved in commencing the arbitration nor were they involved in the arbitration at all.

The arbitration was decided upon and entered into by M.O. (the plaintiff) and the Insured (the guy in the car). GEICO was only told about it after the arbitration award was made.

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True, and yes obviously that was a ridiculous sales pitch, but if I get injured by someone else’s car and they are un- or under-insured, then I have a clause in my own car insurance that makes up the difference.

If I have the gist of this right, an arbitrator made the bizarre decision to uphold the claim and the courts just said to GEICO, “you wanted arbitration so you’re stuck with this decision”?

If so, this is pretty poetic justice. Big corporations have been forcing arbitration in all contracts with us for decades. It’s a secret private legal system where they probably always win.

But not today.

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Basically.

It’s a little more convoluted in that the arbitrator found the insured liable for giving her HPV.

Whether the insurance policy covers the claim is another question.

But the insurance co. has been prevented from running a defence denying liability in the sense of “did the claimant get HPV from the defendant?”

ETA:

Except GEICO didn’t want arbitration.

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Well, my take on that is is that they did want it (over being sued) because that’s what they (like all corporations now) put in every contract they make us sign. We give up all legal rights in favour of arbitration in basically every iTunes EULA, insurance document, cell phone plan, etc nowadays. How enforceable it all is, I do not know.

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Quite possibly. All I can say is that in this case, GEICO are the party that started court proceedings.

The timeline goes:

The claimant notified GEICO of the claim, GEICO rejected it and started federal court proceedings to try and get a ruling that their policy doesn’t cover this kind of claim.

The claimant and her boyfriend agreed between themselves to arbitrate the claim (without telling GEICO or involving them at all). They had the arbitration, the arbitrator found for the claimant and awarded a figure for damages. All without GEICO being involved or aware of it.

Once the award is made, the claimant notified GEICO of the award and started court proceedings to have the court approve the award so she can enforce.

GEICO found out about the proceedings and applied to intervene.

That’s how we got to these proceedings.

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Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification! Not quite the poetic justice I hoped for, but good to know what’s actually happening in this weird case.

It’s definitely weird.

I’m surprised agreeing to arbitration without letting your insurer deal with the arbitration doesn’t immediately void your policy but maybe he was fine to do that because they’d already rejected the claim?

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Yah pretty weird, and kinda puts me on GEICO’s side here. Seems like the couple is trying to do an end run and get away with something.

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Kevin Underhill of Lowering The Bar suggests, if I’m understanding correctly, that GEICO has NOT been ordered to pay the 5.2M (yet), and will still get an opportunity to claim that the policy doesn’t include this type of injury. GEICO was complaining that they weren’t invited to or informed about the arbitration, but the Missouri court held that they can’t now complain when they initially declined to represent the policy-holder.

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That’s what I understood too.

Cory posted this on pluralistic as well:

The Geico STD story is the new McDonald’s Hot Coffee story

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Thanks for posting that.

The McDonald’s part is spot on, the GEICO not so much.

The real Geico STD story is this: Geico demanded that the case be heard by its arbitrator, who ruled against Geico, because Geico’s insurance terms did cover this event.

That sentence for example is simply wrong in every respect.

GEICO did not demand arbitration. It wasn’t Geico’s arbitrator. The arbitrator did not rule against Geico and the arbitration says nothing about whether Geico’s insurance terms cover the event.

But the general point that every time you read about a silly court judgment, dig deeper definitely holds.

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