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In an exclusive interview with the Sun Herald, Cori and Kerri Rigsby said the focus needs to return to the reason they risked their careers in the first place.
State Farm pressured engineers to change Hurricane Katrina damage reports, they said - and documents filed in lawsuits have indicated - minimizing what policyholders were owed. About two months into claims adjusting, the company cancelled damage reports that had not been completed, court records indicate. Claims managers thought, in some cases, that wind covered by company policies was being blamed for damage actually caused by water, covered by flood insurance.
"I guess they're going to get away with hiding the truth," Kerri Rigsby said. "That's what they've been trying to do the whole time. There is no justice.
"How is State Farm now the good guy?"
State Farm responds that the Rigsbys' allegations, aired nationwide on an ABC news program, have proven false. One report in question was supervised by Kerry Rigsby, they pointed out, who later agreed in sworn testimony, as did the engineer whose report was changed, that the property suffered the flood damage documented.
"If two people came forward and very publicly - I'm talking '20/20', AP (The Associated Press), the Biloxi Sun Herald - impugned your reputation, called you frauds, said you were systematically cheating customers in Katrina-claims handling and the whole world saw it and the whole world reacted that way, wouldn't you wish to know what the actual truth was?" said State Farm spokesman Phil Supple.
"So to do that, as far as push so hard to question the sisters, we did what the legal world allows you to do, you have them deposed, you ask questions... We could have stood back and said, 'I guess you can make those accusations and we'll go to court.' Well, we've gone to court."
The sisters said they were naïve in February 2006 when they first reported in a meeting with policyholders' attorney Dickie Scruggs what they called underhanded tactics at the State Farm Catastrophe Office.
"It was a tough decision, but we just needed help and needed somebody to stop what was going on," Kerri Rigsby said. "We didn't know what we were getting into at the time.
"I would do it again. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody else. We just definitely didn't know what to do. I guess, in my wildest fantasy, I thought that Dick (Scruggs) would just fix it."
