A Connecticut attorney with a history of national advocacy for consumer protection has requested a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi to discuss insurance practices that harm consumers and the collision industry. 

John Parese, a partner with Buckley, Wynne and Parese, requested the meeting in a June 25 letter to Bondi. The letter follows a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing titled “Examining the Insurance Industry’s Claims Practices Following Recent Natural Disasters.” 

“The hearing was inspired by several whistleblowers who testified that Allsate and State Farm were systemically and egregiously exploiting consumer claimants after catastrophic loss events,” the letter says. “The unlawful practices exposed during that proceeding are virtually the same as those that occur every day with countless auto body repair claims. Nearly every state auto body trade association has long advocated for greater consumer protections and for the protection of unlawful insurer practices.” 

During the May hearing, two homeowners told the sub-committee they were still fighting claims from Hurricane Helene. Two adjusters also testified that they were pressured to lower estimates. 

The letter provides a history of auto body advocacy in the past 20 years. This includes every statewide auto body association working together to ask for enforcement of the terms of the 1963 Consent Decree. The decree is a Department of Justice (DOJ) agreement that legally instructed 265 insurers and other entities to refrain from conspiring to unreasonably restrain trade and commerce in the collision industry. 

This movement included a letter that Parese wrote to the DOJ in 2009. 

“While the DOJ ultimately resolved at that time to defer prosecution, the decree remained an important standard for conduct in the industry,” the letter says. 

In April 2019, the letter resurfaced when the DOJ sought to terminate nearly 1,300 antitrust judgments, including the 1963 Consent Decree. 

“While nearly every longstanding consent decree identified was terminated, the 1963 Consent Decree was preserved,” the letter says. “Sens. John Kennedy and Richard Blumenthal engaged in a successful bipartisan movement to save the decree. The senators noted that the decree was important for automotive consumer protections and that terminating the decree would ‘eliminate a long-standing agreement to protect consumers against price fixing for auto claims and against steering.’” 

Parese writes that President Donald Trump’s visit to North Carolina following devastating flooding inspired Sen. Josh Hawley’s hearing on insurance claims held in May. 

“The fraud perpetrated on these storm victims is the very same fraud currently being perpetrated on the motoring public, all of which is framed out by the 1963 Consent Decree,” Parese says. “Sen. Hawley remarked that Allstate and State Farm appeared to be ‘running a system of institutionalized fraud’ on consumers. He is exactly right. These are the same fraudulent practices that banded together every known auto body association in the United States and inspired bipartisan congressional advocacy. Other than the perpetrators, there are no known competing perspectives or activists endorsing these exploitative practices.” 

Parese requests a meeting to discuss “important issues and common-sense solutions that can be implemented to help protect consumers and the industry at large.”

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Photo courtesy of bpperry/iStock

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