The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just as American Family Mutual Insurance is gearing up to start selling auto and homeowners policies in Washington – including the high-income/high-growth Seattle area – the company gets hammered by a nearly $3 million punitive damages award.
The case, which was settled out of court last week, included damaging testimony that American Family employees in the Colorado office routinely joked about the company’s get-tough policy regarding paying claims.
Those revelations were enough to tilt a jury in Boulder, Colo., last November in favor of Dominic Peressini, who earned a Ph.D in education from UW-Madison in 1996 and had been a tenured professor at the University of Colorado.