Insurance Law

• Hood was on the stand this afternoon for over three hours. A common theme throughout the testimony was I don't know, you'll have to ask Courtney Schloemer, she was running the investigation. I don't micromanage these things.
• Hood says Schloemer wrote the letter to Alice Martin, he reviewed and signed it, that Schloemer wrote the subpoenas, and that in his mind there isn't any non-prosecution agreement because State Farm didn't get the class action settlement approved by Judge Senter and that was a condition of the agreement.
• Hood denied doing anything for campaign contributions as a quid pro quo.  He  admitted talking to Dickie Scruggs and others before filing his lawsuit against State Farm, and to circulating a copy of the complaint to Scruggs and others before it was filed.
• He said that if he's read anything coming out of Alabama in the Renfroe v. Rigsby case he doesn't recall.
• He said he learned about the Rigsbys' $150,000 annual salaries from seeing the information in the paper.
• About his testimony to Congress last year, where he discussed the result of his investigation, Hood said he thought he was there to just talk about the conflicts of interest in the flood program.

There was a big meeting of lawyers with the judge at the end of the day, the results of which I don't yet know.  The hearing will reconvene at 9 a.m. February 7.