Progressive Insurance Faces Lawsuit for Taping Confessions During Church Support Group
It's not news that insurance companies will do anything within their power to dispute your personal injury claim or find a way to discredit your case. That's because their job is to protect their bottom line. Total Lawyers has profiled insurance companies who have used intimidating tactics to limit liability in the past. But in this case, many people think that investigators for Progressive Insurance have crossed the line.
The couple targeted by the investigation was Bill and Leandra Pitts from Henry County, Georgia, who had filed a claim with Progressive as part of an auto claim made under their underinsured motorist coverage. When they were involved in an auto accident in 2004, the other motorist only had $50,000 in coverage, so as part of total compensation, their lawyer sought remuneration from Progressive, who held the couple's policy.
According to standard insurance practice, Progressive began an investigation of the couple's claim to ascertain the legitimacy and extent of the damages for which they were seeking compensation. However, when Merlin Investigations, hired to complete the needed legwork, began developing its strategy to gather information that could hurt the Pitts's claim, their tactics became non-standard very quickly.
The two investigators hired by Progressive, James Purgason, Jr. and Paige Weeks, found out where the couple attended church, Southside Christian Fellowship, and began attending services, falsely posing as a married couple to earn the trust of current members. After expressing an interest in joining the church, the fake "couple" was invited to attend group support sessions for new members at the home of Ken King, a member and ordained minister.
Unbeknownst to the support group members, not only were Purgason and Weeks listening closely to what they were saying, they were taping the sessions to gather potential evidence against Bill and Leandra Pitts. When members later found out, many of them were devastated. The subjects of these group confessionals were, naturally, very personal in nature, and included drug and alcohol addiction, sexual orientation issues, and disclosure of personal secrets such as abortion.
Understandably, many members who had confessed secrets in the group sessions left for good after King revealed to them that they had been taped. Those who stayed had a difficult time rebuilding the trust in fellow group members, as well as King himself.
The Pitts's lawyer, Atlanta attorney Wayne Grant, called the deception and misrepresentation an "invasion of privacy to the worst degree". According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his clients seek unspecified damages for invasion of privacy, breach of confidentiality, emotional distress and fraud.
To many people, the guilt of the investigators and Progressive might be patently obvious. After all, no one should expect to have to protect themselves against insurance investigators in a situation of confidentiality like a group therapy or confessional setting. Right?
However, the legal aspect of this investigation may not exactly follow the gut reaction by those involved in the incident. Georgia law allows recording of conversations, as long as one party is aware of it, and the tape-recorded session may be seen to fall under this scenario. Many private investigators gather information under false pretenses, including gathering audio and video information on subjects without their prior knowledge, a fact which the defense may use as evidence to prove that despite common sentiment about the legality of the practice, it is acceptable in certain circles for specific reasons. Both investigators claim that they operated within the limits of the law at all times, and after consideration, the jury may be forced to rule that they did.
After all of the fallout from the admission of the investigation tactics, it may turn out that the couple has no effective legal defense for their rights in this situation. The line that many believe the investigators crossed may in fact be moral or ethical rather than legal, and as such, their actions might not be illegal at all.
However, this hasn't stopped the state of Georgia from conducting an investigation of its own into the ethics of the investigation under their state insurance commissioner. Recently, the Commissioner John W. Oxendine ordered Progressive to preserve any relevant documents that might help its study. Also, in response to a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution of the investigation tactics, the president of Progressive Insurance issued a press release, in which he admitted that "the actions of the investigators and Progressive people involved in this situation were incompatible with our Values and inappropriate." Of course, his apology is intended to salvage his and the company's reputation in the competitive insurance industry, and did not admit any legal wrongdoing.
Stay tuned to Total Lawyers for developments in this lawsuit, as it determines what may be an important distinction between ethical and legal regulation on insurance company investigations.
