Insurance Bailout Fund Crippled By Lawsuits, Claims As Louisiana Policyholders Wait For Relief

If it weren’t for a healthy savings account, Rosanna ‘Roshi’ Mason might still be living in a cramped disaster relief trailer in her front yard with her husband and two kids.

Maison Insurance Co. was supposed to pay for the damage to their home in LaPlace, but the insurer went belly-up and was taken over by the state. Maison had sent ‘settlement’ checks, but they were frozen before her lawyer could get them endorsed and cashed.

Mason said she and her husband were anxious to do what it took to keep their new insurance policy with Allied Trust, so they shelled out at least $35,000 from their own savings for urgent repairs.

‘Everything that we did, we did out of pocket,’ Mason said. ‘There’s still more work to be done on the outside of the house, but we’re flatlined. We can’t put nothing else up.’

The couple has joined some 25,000 others still seeking relief from the state’s industry bailout program, the Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association. The once-obscure organization has been thrust onto the frontlines of the state’s insurance crisis after at least 11 insurance companies that write business in Louisiana folded in the wake of multiple hurricanes.