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Insurance Industry Rears its Ugly Advertising Head - Again

By Joe Consumer

In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Crum and Foster, Aetna and St. Paul insurance companies launched direct advertising assaults on the civil jury system, trying to scare the public that jury verdicts would effect jurors' pocketbooks through higher premiums.  These ads contained so many flagrant errors and fabrications that even the insurance industry trade publications criticized them. 

Eventually the insurance industry realized they needed to pull back from being the public face of ?tort reform.?  In 1994, one PR exec told an insurance audience, ?You need to have credibility and that means when you pick people to join your coalition, make sure they?re credible.  And if they?re not credible, keep them away.  In a tort reform battle if State Farm - I think they're here, Nationwide - is the leader of the coalition, you're not going to pass the bill.  It is not credible, O.K., because it's so self-serving.? 

To quote Carol Ann said in Poltergeist II ??They?re back!?

North Carolina still has the doctrine of ?contributory negligence,? which prohibits a victim who is even the slightest bit negligent from recovering any compensation for injuries caused by another.  This law is so Draconian and unjust that just about every state in the country has repealed it.  But the insurance industry likes it because it slashes what they owe injured policyholders.  So it has launched a statewide media blitz to try to kill bi-partisan efforts to finally eradicate this doctrine once and for all, and using with the same bogus, discredited scare tactics they used in the 1950s. 

Meanwhile in California, Mercury Insurance is spending millions of dollars to pass Prop. 17, a June 8 ballot initiative that ?guts a key consumer protection, reducing accountability for insurance companies so they can raise premiums.?  All the major papers are urging a NO vote on this ?special interest scam.?   Opponents are fighting back, hard.  Here is their 15-second spot:

Full post as published by ThePopTort on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).