State Farm's hail playbook is under active discovery in 5 named cases
A coverage-law roadmap names five live State Farm hail cases and the internal hail-handling systems being pried open in discovery.
Chip Merlin's roadmap post names five current State Farm hail cases (Moore, Barlow: federal, N.D./W.D. Oklahoma; Hursh, Nida, Barnett, Oklahoma state courts) and lists the institutional discovery targets: the Wind/Hail Fire Model Enhancement Team (WHMET), the "Wind/Hail Playbook" and its training decks, Xactware triggers and management-approval routing, consultant work by Accenture, HAAG, and AccuWeather, and internal dashboards showing full-roof-replacement rates. The headline data point being litigated: full-roof approvals allegedly fell from 70.4% to 34.7% in one 2021 window.
Why it matters
The specific mechanisms carriers use to convert full-replacement roofs into partials (software triggers, weather-model consultants, management review gates) are being pried open by name in open court. If Merlin's clients pry the box open, every future denial letter is quotable back at the carrier. Roofing / storm shops get a template for what to preserve on their side of the paper trail: adjuster identity, software prompts observed, consultant names on the report.
The read
Discovery motions do not pay for shingles, and none of these cases will resolve soon. The value is the vocabulary. Naming the model team, the playbook, the software triggers and the consultants changes how a deposition or an appraisal conference goes. Start preserving your side now: adjuster names, screenshots of any software prompt you are shown, and every consultant named in a denial letter.
How we got here
Storyline: coverage law 11 stories so far
What changed five named cases and the WHMET name are new; previous coverage of this arc was carrier behavior in the abstract.
- 4 earlier stories on this storyline
- Coverage law: is a metal-roof hail endorsement "largely illusory"? (TX federal court)
- Coverage law: nine lessons for Palisades/Altadena wildfire-smoke claims (Pollock v. Federal)
- Florida claims lawsuits down to ~half of 2020 levels, reform is "working"
- Ohio Supreme Court: once you sign the appraisal award, it's closed, even if you find more damage
- Florida appeals court wipes out a $335K cast-iron pipe verdict for having no basis in evidence
- Appeals court kills the "cosmetic damage" escape hatch on hail-dented roofs
- State Farm's hail playbook is under active discovery in 5 named cases You are here
Read next
Sources Property Insurance Coverage Law Blog (Merlin), www.propertyinsurancecoveragelaw.com/blog/st… (published ).
Legal. High confidence