Woman fights insurance giant and wins

But after months of battling from her wheelchair with the behemoth Farmers Insurance Group -- and galvanizing public outcry in the process -- the soft-spoken delivery woman has won the day.


Adams

Ever since the widely reported news of Farmers' refusal to cover health care costs for massive injuries Adams suffered after being crushed in a six-car pileup last March, a flood of outraged e-mails and phone calls has swamped officials and lawmakers -- from state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler to executives at Farmers headquarters in Los Angeles.

Some have vowed to cancel their policies. Others said they would boycott the insurance company giant, which covers 566,000 cars, 274,000 homes and 17,000 small businesses in Washington.

"This is about as low as an insurance company can possibly go," said one of the messages to Kreidler's office. "Have they no shame? No integrity? I hope that there is something you can do on behalf of this poor woman."

The firestorm stems from an unlikely confluence of events: an afternoon drive Adams took down Aurora Avenue North to deliver dentures and crowns for a client. At the same moment, 39-year-old Michael Testa, furious at his girlfriend, rammed into his girlfriend's pickup truck from behind, forcing it across the centerline and straight into Adams' tiny Hyundai .

The impact of the crash crushed Adams' car and left her in a coma for nine days. Parts of her internal organs were removed. Bones were crushed, a lung collapsed, and Adams was told she might never walk normally again. She has been in a wheelchair ever since.

Testa pleaded guilty last week to vehicular assault and will be sentenced Nov. 10.

But Adams' insurer, a subsidiary of Farmers, claimed that her injuries were caused by Testa's intentional act -- not an accident -- and thus, the company reasoned, it had no obligation to pay.


		Karen Ducey / P-I
	Ethel Adams had been told by the Farmers Insurance Group that her injuries would not be covered because they were the result of a road rage incident -- an intentional act, not accidental. Her attorney, Paul Stritmatter, background, scoffed at that logic and filed a lawsuit.

"What was this if it wasn't an accident?" said the 60-year-old, who has already incurred about $500,000 in hospital bills, with more to come. "This is everybody's worst nightmare. You know you have insurance -- you've paid for it -- and you've got these massive injuries. Then to be told, 'No, you don't have coverage,' it was like someone punched me in the stomach. It makes you physically ill."

Kreidler seems to have had a similar reaction.

He characterized Farmers' denial as "an imaginative interpretation" of state insurance law and gave the company an ultimatum: Pay up by 5 p.m. on Thursday or face legal action.

Apparently, the pressure worked.

"Coverage is available for the losses incurred by Ethel Adams, a motorist injured in an intentional road rage incident earlier this year," said Farmers spokeswoman Mary Flynn in a statement issued late Wednesday afternoon.

The insurance giant, Flynn added, had never denied coverage. Farmers was simply relying on state case law requiring that someone involved in an accident be found negligent before coverage is triggered. But this was not an accident, she said, because Testa intentionally slammed into his girlfriend's truck.

Adams' attorney, Paul Stritmatter, who Wednesday sued Farmers for his client, scoffed at that logic.

"I think I've counted five different times where the company has said, 'We're denying you coverage,' " he said. "I battle with insurance companies all the time, but I've never had a case where they tried to claim it's not an accident. Even that's a new one for me."