Farmers Insurance has second thoughts

SEATTLE TIMES

October 15, 2005
By Danny Westneat
dwestneat@seattletimes.com

Farmers Insurance said yesterday it might yet provide coverage to innocent bystander Ethel Adams for injuries she suffered in a road-rage...

Farmers Insurance said yesterday it might yet provide coverage to innocent bystander Ethel Adams for injuries she suffered in a road-rage crash last spring.

But the company’s reasoning was just as odd as its previous decision that Adams’ crash was not an accident because a stranger caused it on purpose. I wrote yesterday about the plight of Adams, a 60-year-old Everett woman who nearly died last March when a truck crashed into her while she drove on Aurora Avenue North.

The wreck was caused when a man named Michael R. Testa rammed his girlfriend’s truck from behind to run it off the road. He bashed her truck across the centerline and into oncoming traffic.

Four other cars crashed. The girlfriend’s truck slammed into the car Adams was driving, squashing it.

Testa had no insurance. But Farmers decided that Adams’ $2 million uninsured-motorist coverage didn’t apply to anything Testa did because he intended to cause the wreck. In Farmers’ view, the wreck technically wasn’t an accident.