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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (4571)	4/29/2002 1:38:48 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12245

4/19/02 WSJ article on "janitors insurance" (continued) Facing tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, Mrs. Stillwagoner's family asked her employer, Advantage Medical Services Inc., if it provided any life insurance or other benefits. The owner of the company, Ron Lummus, "'tearfully' denied the existence of any insurance covering Peggy," a Texas appeals-court judge later wrote. A few months after the accident, an insurance-company investigator called Mrs. Stillwagoner's husband, Kenneth Stillwagoner, asking him to sign papers releasing her medical records. When the family returned the investigator's call, they learned that Advantage Medical Services held a $200,000 insurance policy on Mrs. Stillwagoner's life. "My father blew his top," says Lt. Stillwagoner, who, like several other family members, had worked for Mr. Lummus at one time or another. "We were pretty shocked." The family sued in state court in Hopkins County, arguing that the company had no insurable interest in Mrs. Stillwagoner's life and seeking the death benefit the company had received. She was, after all, just a temporary employee who had been with the company for two months, and who was replaced the day after her death. The family lost and appealed. The company insisted that it did have an insurable interest, because the field nurse had the "opportunity to attract or create new business and was therefore a valuable employee," the Texas appeals court noted. In late 1998, the appeals court reversed the lower court's ruling and found that Kenneth Stillwagoner had a right to challenge the insurance payment to Advantage Medical Services. Subsequently, the company and Travelers Insurance Co., a unit of Citigroup Inc. that sold Advantage the coverage, settled with the family for $395,000. A spokeswoman for Travelers declined to comment. Carl D. Bryan, who represented Mr. Lummus and Advantage Medical, says the accidental-death policy was a rider that came with a policy the company had bought to pay wages for employees injured on the job, not a policy the company took out separately. Mr. Lummus "wasn't trying to hide the fact that there was insurance -- he didn't even know there was [life] insurance." In any case, Mr. Bryan adds, "if a company pays the premium, why shouldn't it benefit from the policy?" Write to Ellen E. Schultz at ellen.schultz@wsj.com and Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved