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

The CDC puts it at about 4152 deaths in 2019:

So given that somewhere in the general neighborhood of 40,000,000 American women have the virus (much higher than the “reported” rate because most go undiagnosed) the ballpark annual death rate from it is roughly 0.001%, right?

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You’re right, that’s cases, not deaths.

Also, the total infected population in the US is estimated at 45M total, not just women.

The quote from cancer.gov is:

In the United States, high-risk HPVs cause 3% of all cancers in women and 2% of all cancers in men. Each year, there are about 45,000 new cases of cancer in parts of the body where HPV is often found, and HPV is estimated to cause about 36,000 of theses, according to the CDC.

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The estimates apparently vary widely. I’m seeing the total is estimated at 79 million here:
https://www.womenshealth.gov/a-z-topics/human-papillomavirus

But no point quibbling about the details. It’s obviously very serious for some people who get it, but definitely not for the vast majority.

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Which one has Dean Winters as Mayhem? He’s my favorite mascot so far.

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There is sort of a legit version of this. I don’t currently own a car, but drive other peoples’ cars a lot. So I have “carless“ car insurance that insures whatever I am driving. Doesn’t cost much and keeps my policy history active until I have a car again.

But yah, that other thing sounds like a scam for sure.

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That is also a scam. Damages caused in permissive use of a vehicle are paid by the policy on that vehicle. This applies to rental cars too.

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I’ve read the policy, thanks. It isn’t a scam and I don’t need your unsolicited advice in the matter. This is not for rental cars.

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I am merely offering some unsolicited advice as someone who works in auto insurance claims. Unless you are a professional driver or seeking additional personal medical and liability coverage beyond what most people have for their cars, something like this is probably not necessary.

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That’s also Allstate

and they also do the ones with crabs :crab: :crab: :crab:

Their branding is all over the place

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I kinda like the song from that commercial.

Grazing on the Grass is a classic on their other commercial.

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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