No On Prop. 17 - Mercury Insurance Alleged To Have Committed Violations and Discrimination

It is no secret among plaintiff's personal injury lawyers that Mercury is difficult to deal with. My opinion is that Mercury has decided to invest a lot of money in politics and advertising than in paying the people their insureds have injured.

So the new state report is not a surprise. Most of the new report deals with how Mercury treats its customers (as opposed to how it treats the people its customers have hurt), but based on my interactions with Mercury, it does not surprise me at all.

So remember to vote No on 17, funded primarily by Mercury. Here is all you should need to know about it:

1. Mercury Insurance funded the signature collecting process.
2. It is opposed by the Consumer Federation of California.
3. It is opposed by the Campaign for Consumer Rights.

I discussed Prop 17 in a little more detail in an earlier post. That post is summarized below:

1. The Contra Costa Times staff editorial wrote that Prop 17 is "designed to fool voters into believing it is simply a change in the law that would allow insurers to offer a 'continuous coverage' discount on policies to new customers who switch auto insurance companies."
2. In fact, Prop 17 would allow insurance companies to raise rates on anyone who was an interruption in auto insurance, even if the people had no car and no reason to have auto insurance.
3. This means that anyone who did not have insurance for a period - even a single day - could have their rates raised by Mercury or any other insurance company: a soldier returning to civilian life; a person who did not drive while he or she was in school; a family that missed a single payment by a single day and had their insurance rates canceled.