Insurance Adjusters To Appeal Dismissal

According to the Times Picayune, a group of former insurance adjusters who filed a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging that insurers have been systematically shifting the cost of hurricane damage onto the National Flood Insurance Program have asked the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out a lower court ruling dismissing their case.

The appeal by the group of unidentified insurance adjusters known as Branch Consultants LLC was filed less than two weeks after Mississippi lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, who had a competing whistle-blower suit over hurricane insurance issues, pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to bribe a judge.

Allan Kanner, an attorney representing Branch Consultants, said an appeal was forthcoming anyway, but the stunning downfall of Scruggs, a famed tobacco attorney, underscores why taxpayers shouldn't have to pin their hopes on one suit to pursue claims of fraud against the federal government.