Insurer ordered to pay grocer
$21 million awarded for Katrina damage
as posted at www.nola.com
By Susan Finch
June 04, 2008
The insurer for five Robert's Fresh Markets should pay the grocery chain's owner more than $21 million for unreasonably failing to pay what was necessary to fix Hurricane Katrina windstorm and other damage, a federal court jury ruled Monday.
"It's the biggest Katrina judgment in Louisiana or Mississippi that we know of," Philip Franco, who represented Marc Robert II in his battle against United Fire & Casualty Insurance Co., said Tuesday. Soren Giselson, head of the Louisiana Association of Justice insurance section, agreed with that assessment.
The $21 million award, Franco said, gave his client almost exactly what he said United Fire & Casualty Insurance Co. still owed him to repair the stores -- $16.7 million -- plus penalties for delaying payment.
Franco said the jury's decision came after the jury heard "that this insurance company delayed and refused to make payments because of the financial stress put on that company because they didn't purchase enough reinsurance to cover the extent of the catastrophic losses caused by Katrina."
The Times-Picayune tried unsuccessfully to reach an attorney who represented United Fire & Casualty in the trial.
The jury's verdict, capping a trial that lasted several days over two weeks, earmarked sums for limited liability companies that ran Robert's Fresh Market stores in New Orleans on St. Claude Avenue, South Broad Street, Annunciation Street and Canal Street at Carrollton Avenue, as well as the original Fresh Market store on West Esplanade Avenue in Kenner.
Each store was assigned money to cover building damage, business interruption, tenant improvements and loss of business personal property from windstorm and from vandalism, theft or looting.
Of the stores covered by the $21 million award, the Kenner store reopened in November 2005, and Marc Robert hopes to get the St. Claude store back in operation as soon as he gets money from the judgment and agrees with the Schwegmann family interests, who own the building, on how it should be repaired, Franco said. The jury set aside $1,080,000 for the Schwegmann owners, half of it for lost rents and other half for penalties.
The other three Fresh Market stores covered by the jury's award money will not reopen. They include the South Broad Street store, which closed before Katrina and where Robert's was using only the second level, and the Annunciation Street store.
Franco said the Fresh Market formerly at Canal Street and Carrollton Avenue won't reopen because Robert this spring lost his lease on the site, now owned by Walgreen's, when he ran out of money to pay rent of $30,000 a month.
Meanwhile, a Robert's store that wasn't covered by the federal case -- the one at Robert E. Lee and West End Boulevard -- reopened in November. Marc Robert is fighting his insurer over damage to that store in a Civil Court lawsuit.
Robert is also in the midst of trying to open another Robert's Fresh Market, at Claiborne and Carrollton avenues next to a new Walgreen's store there.
United Policyholders is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 and dedicated to educating the public on insurance issues and consumer rights. UP publishes educational materials and serves as a resource for individual and business policyholders and residents of communities with insurance problems. UP’s Amicus Project provides information to courts of law to support policyholders’ legal rights. UP unites policyholders and their advocates by sharing information. Write to UP at 110 Pacific Ave., PMB 262, San Francisco, CA. 94111, call us at (510) 763-9740, or visit our website at www.unitedpolicyholders.org.
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