Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Fire Survivor Group Says It Has Sued the Insurance Commissioner Over the State Farm Case

The network says no neutral decisionmaker has been provided to hear its request to join the state’s enforcement case

A Altadena-based network of Eaton and Palisades fire survivors said Tuesday it has sued Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to keep the state’s case against State Farm from being settled before survivors are heard.

Every Fire Survivor’s Network says its petition asks a court to order the California Department of Insurance to provide a neutral decisionmaker to hear the group’s request to join the enforcement case, and to bar the department and State Farm from settling, dismissing or narrowing that case until the request is decided.

The group says it is not asking the court to rule on whether State Farm broke the law, or to grant the intervention itself. 

The underlying case is the department’s own. On May 4, the department filed an Accusation and Order to Show Cause against State Farm General Insurance Company, the first step toward a public hearing before an administrative law judge. Department examiners reviewed a sample of 220 claims and found 398 violations of state law in 114 of them, citing slow and inadequate investigations, missed statutory deadlines for accepting, denying and paying claims, misclassified testing costs, misrepresented policy provisions and inadequate communication, according to the department.

The filing adds 34 further violations drawn from consumer complaints. Penalties may reach $5,000 per violation, or $10,000 for willful violations, and the department has asked to suspend State Farm’s certificate of authority for up to a year. The matter is File No. OSC-2026-00001.

State Farm has rejected the department’s account. Responding to the May filing, the company said it rejects any suggestion that it “engaged in a general practice of mishandling” or intentionally underpaid wildfire claims, and said it would respond through the process.

The survivors’ group petitioned the department on June 16 for full party status, seeking the right to conduct discovery, present evidence, cross-examine witnesses and take part in settlement talks. 

Nearly three months on, the group says, no decisionmaker has been provided to hear the petition while the enforcement case moves ahead. It says the department has served State Farm with charges and discovery, that State Farm has responded, that the department describes the two sides as in “early discovery,” and that the group is informed and believes the department and State Farm are privately negotiating a possible settlement.

“Survivors should not have to fight our own insurance regulator,” Joy Chen, the group’s executive director, said in the announcement.

“They should have their petition to participate decided by a neutral decisionmaker,” Pamela Pressley, senior staff attorney at Consumer Watchdog, said in the same announcement.

The group says it holds firsthand accounts from more than 1,600 State Farm policyholders describing the same practices the department found in its sample, evidence it says goes to the question State Farm disputes: whether the violations were isolated or a general business practice. It is represented by Singleton Schreiber and Consumer Watchdog.

Based in Pasadena, the network says it represents more than 10,000 survivors and allies of the two fires. State Farm policyholders filed approximately 11,300 residential claims from the Los Angeles wildfires, according to the department’s claims tracker.

Los Angeles County opened a separate front on Aug. 31, suing State Farm over its handling of Eaton and Palisades claims under the state’s unfair competition and false advertising laws and seeking restitution for policyholders, according to County Counsel Dawyn Harrison. The County Counsel’s investigation drew on information from the survivors’ network and other community organizations.