Last week, The Court of Appeal First District, Florida, has upheld the Florida Office of Insurance's suspension of Allstate. To keep up on the drama, you can look at my previous posts.

The more important news came on the Allstate website. First, Allstate gave the perfunctory, "we are reviewing the court order," media statement. But, on the same day, the company released another news release entitled "Allstate Acts to Dispel Inaccurate Portrayal of Claims Practices" in which the company agreed to release 150,000 documents related to its claims practices in the 1990's. NOTE: Your Guide worked for a brief time in the 1990's at a law firm that defended insured Allstate drivers. Specifically, it agreed to release information related to its dealings with the consultant McKinsey & Co.

Allstate's dealings with McKinsey are fodder for trial lawyers against the big insurer. The documents released April 4 have been seen by certain trial attorneys under a broad confidentiality agreement. In Missouri, a judge refused to put such an order in place and the insurer incurred millions in fines rather than turn over the documents. It is alleged that Allstate and McKinsey made use of software and claims practices that routinely, arbitrarily, and without cause, lowered claims or denied claims to meet a specific dollar figure set by the insurer. If true, in some cases, and in some states, such actions would be contrary to consumer laws and insurance laws. The Tampa Tribune ran an excellent article about the documents in January.

Allstate released the documents contending that "as a whole" the documents show that "a careful, fact-based analysis to better enable the company to more promptly investigate and more consistently and effectively evaluate claims based upon their own merits." The company contends previous reports about the documents were based "on only snippets from the documents taken out of context."

Finally, there is more fighting to come. Allstate states it will keep writing policies because it does not consider the lifting of the stay "final." Insurance Commissioner McCarthy begs to differ and issued a statement that the suspension will resume immediately.