For many years Progressive Insurance Company has used the slogan “Fast, Fair Claims Service” in its advertising, but if you ask Michael and Dewana Holmes they will tell you Progressive claims service has not been fast and certainly not fair. In 2001 the Holmes moved their automobile insurance to Progressive. With their policy, they purchased underinsured motorist coverage (UIM). This coverage basically says that if you are injured by the fault of another driver, and that driver does not have enough liability insurance coverage for the injury damages, you can access your own UIM coverage to make up the difference. 

On July 29, 2005 Dewana was rear-ended by another driver while she was stopped in traffic.  Her neck injuries would not resolve and in fact they grew worse by the day. Her family doctor sent her to an orthopaedic surgeon. The orthopaedic doctor tried conservative care but that was not successful. He then ordered a round of epidural and facet block injections. These five injections were done over a five month period but did not relieve her continued pain. Finally, he recommended surgery. Three disks in her neck were fused together. While the surgery provided some benefit it did not relieve her pain and in fact made it worse. Her now chronic pain from the injuries suffered in the accident, forced Dewana to make a difficult choice. After the surgery, she had been able to return to work part time, but the stress and activities of her job caused her pain to intensify to the point that she was taking medication at home and spending her evenings in bed recuperating from the pain brought on by work.  Dewana said, “I had two children at home to take care of [age 17 and 10] and my husband had to travel a lot with his work. I felt like I had to make a choice between work and what was best for my family.” In August of 2007, Dewana resigned from her job, a decision her pain management doctor concurred with in writing.

While all of this was going on, Dewana was fighting her own insurance company [Progressive] because they did not believe the other driver was at-fault or that Dewana was injured in the accident. Early in 2007, the insurance company for the at-fault driver (USAA) paid the full amount of their liability coverage to Michael and Dewana Holmes. “When Mark [Wolfe, of M&W] first called me and told me that USAA was paying their full limits, I thought my own insurance company would then pay our UIM benefits and I could at least be done with this aspect of the accident,” said Dewana. But instead of paying the UIM limits, Progressive filed a petition to have the claim and case moved to Federal court. After its initial filing failed, Progressive was successful in having the case transferred on its second filing. “Insurance companies like to have cases in Federal court because they know Federal court requires a tremendous amount of attorney time and resources because of the number of briefs and filings that are required under the Federal court pre-trial order,” said Wolfe. Over the next year and half, Progressive paid a senior partner in a large statewide law firm and two associates in that firm to fight Dewana’s UIM claim. And fight they did. By the time the case was finally ready for trial on July 1, 2008, over 70 separate pleadings, motions and orders had been filed in the case. [United States District Court, Southern District of Alabama, case number: 1:07-CV-487.] All of this over a simple rear-end accident case. Mark Wolfe, the lead attorney on the case for Dewana, said: “The most amazing thing to me about this case was the resources and intensity Progressive brought to this case. Up until about two weeks before trial, they continued to claim Dewana some how contributed to this accident. They contested, through out the trial, that the other driver was at-fault and fought tooth and nail to limit what information about the prior settlement the jury could be told about.” He went on to say, “they attacked the credibility of Dewana and Michael Holmes in open court calling them ‘untrustworthy’ and tried to impeach her credibility with insignificant medical records from several years before the accident.” Thankfully for Michael and Dewana on July 3, 2008 the jury of five women and three men took only 40 minutes to deliver a verdict in their favor for the full amount of benefits asked for by Wolfe in his closing argument ($205,721.07). After the trial Wolfe said,   “Michael and Dewana Holmes are people of character who have worked hard to provide a good life for themselves and their family. This accident disrupted their lives and caused them a lot of emotional and financial stress. Instead of being there to help them in their time of need, Progressive threw salt in their wounds by calling them liars and basically accusing them of being opportunistic predators trying to ‘put one over’ on the insurance company.”  He went on to say,  “I am grateful for the jury’s confirmation in this case and I am pleased we were able to recover the benefits that the Holmes’ paid for, but this claim and case should have been resolved a long time ago without having to go through all of this. I would estimate Progressive spent well over $45,000 in legal fees and litigation expenses to try and keep from fulfilling the promise they made to Michael and Dewana when they took their premiums.”

The reality for Michael and Dewana Holmes is that even with this victory, they are still facing challenges and a disruption in their life plans. Dewana continues under the care of a pain management doctor and Michael, a chemical engineer, has recently taken a week-end job as a security guard to help make up for the loss of Dewana’s income.  Michael Holmes said, “We knew no matter what the jury did, Dewana was still going to be in pain the next day and we were going to have to continue to adapt to these challenges, but I think for Dewana, the jury’s verdict was important because it confirmed what she had been telling Progressive for the last two and a half years; that she was hurt in the accident and her injuries forced her to quit work. For her, I think it became a simple matter of confirming that she was being truthful.”