Insurance

Gretchen Hoffman Seven people have been arrested in Glendale and Burbank in connection with a suspected fraud ring that staged collisions to collect settlements from insurance companies, officials said. Investigators with a Los Angeles County-organized auto fraud task force executed arrest warrants for 28 people throughout the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday, and at least 10 suspects are still outstanding. Search and arrest warrants were issued for homes, chiropractic offices and a car-repair business around the county, including Glendale and Burbank.

Officials want to ensure they're covered if there are environmental hazards with land.CITY HALL -- The Glendale Redevelopment Agency agreed Tuesday to pay $25,000 to an insurance brokerage firm to help protect the city in the event that environmental hazards are discovered during construction of the Americana at Brand project. The City Council, acting as the Redevelopment Agency, unanimously approved a contract with ABD Services, an insurance brokerage and risk management firm.

Glendale Community College has new courses to prepare students for jobs in the insurance industry and insurance-related positions. The classes can be taken during the summer. The courses are Business Administration 111-115, "Introduction to Insurance," "Insurance Code and Ethics," "Property and Liability Insurance," "Personal Insurance" and "Commercial Insurance." The introductory course and code and ethics class are offered in both summer sessions. Personal insurance is offered in the first session only, and property and liability and commercial insurance classes are offered in the second session only.

Claudia Peschiutta GLENDALE -- Whether Armenian Genocide victims or their heirs will be able to sue U.S. insurance companies for claims stemming from old policies depends only on the pen of Gov. Gray Davis. The bill, which seeks to extend the statute of limitations for claims through 2010, was approved by the state Senate with a 39-0 vote on Tuesday and sent to Davis for approval. State Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Glendale), a principal coauthor of the bill, appeared before his peers Tuesday to urge the legislation's passage.

How's that again? This was my reaction to the article "City Code Could Cost," in the May 21 Glendale News-Press. I was about to shrug off the piece as one of those occasional "non-story-stories," but the more I read, the more I realized that some clarity was necessary. The premise of the article is entirely incorrect. It begins, "A misunderstanding about who bears responsibility for outdoor events in the city -- the city or the group putting the event on -- may cause the insurance for the Montrose Harvest Market to skyrocket in October."

DOWNTOWN — Police arrested seven protesters at the California headquarters of health insurer CIGNA Corporation on Wednesday after they refused to leave the lobby of the Glendale building while chanting slogans like “Patients, not profits. Medicare for all.” The group of insurance-industry critics was part of a larger demonstration in front of the building on Brand Boulevard, where dozens of protesters paced the sidewalk waving signs and denouncing private insurers as focusing on their bottom lines at the expense of offering complete care for the sick.

Even in the currently hot real estate market, business is poised to get worse for Investors Title Co., after state insurance officials announced Wednesday it had fined the company $1 million and ordered it to stop illegal, under-the-table deals with real estate agents, builders and lenders. Besides the $1-million fine ordered by the state Department of Insurance, Investors Title Co. also agreed to pay a $5,000 penalty for failure to comply with a previous Order of the Commissioner to cease and desist and to reimburse $52,974 to the Department of Insurance for the costs of the investigation.

Karen S. Kim GLENDALE -- A bill that would require group health insurance policies to include coverage for hearing aids to deaf or hearing-impaired children under 18 years passed out of the state Senate Committee on Insurance on Wednesday. Introduced by state Sen. Jack Scott (D-Glendale), SB 1638 indicates that the costs of hearing aids, excluding batteries and cords, must be completely covered by insurance companies. Scott said his motivation to write the bill came from the request of Burbank mother Susan Grafman who was upset her insurance provider would not cover the hearing aids for her two deaf children.

Amber Willard GLENDALE -- Little more than a week remains for residents to file insurance claims related to the Northridge earthquake. A California Legislature bill approved last year extended the deadline to Dec. 31 for coverage requests to be filed. The law was passed, in part, to reopen claims that had been rejected because they were filed after the statue of limitations on them had expired. The January 1994 quake caused billions of dollars in damage to homes and other buildings throughout the county.

Glendale woman sues insurance company A Glendale woman is one plaintiff in 13 lawsuits filed Thursday alleging that health insurance companies illegally canceled insurance coverage for patients who already had medical treatments approved by these companies, officials said. The lawsuits, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, are against WellPoint, its subsidiary, Blue Cross of California, and Blue Shield, said Jerry Flanagan, spokesman for the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

The City Council this week agreed to pay $145,000 to settle a breach of contract lawsuit filed by the insurer of a construction company hired to repair slopes in Glendale that were severely damaged by a mudslide in 2005. Hartford Fire Insurance Co. filed the lawsuit Nov. 1, claiming the contractor was underpaid for excavation work that turned out to be much more intensive than what was advertised by the city. In its lawsuit, Hartford Fire originally asked for $450,000 in damages - nearly as much as the city agreed to pay the contractor, Remedial Civil Constructors Inc., in 2009.

Bargaining teams for Glendale Unified School District and its teachers union are expected to finalize a deal this week that would defer five unpaid furlough days scheduled for 2012-13. District officials said they expect to put the agreement in writing during a meeting scheduled for Thursday. In April, the Glendale Teachers Assn. had rejected an identical proposal - which defers the furlough days to 2013-14 - asking instead that two of the five days be eliminated outright and three be deferred.

Rep. Adam Schiff -- a longtime supporter of efforts to officially recognize the Armenian genocide -- called the decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday to nullify lawsuits against German insurance companiesseeking payouts on victims' policies "flawed. " The court ruled unanimously that decendents of genocide victims who took out policies from 1875 to 1923 cannot sue foreign companies because only the federal government has the power to bring them to U.S. courts.

Survivors of Armenian genocide victims can't sue German insurance companies for failing to pay claims on their ancestors because only the federal government has the power to bring foreign entities to U.S. courts, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The 11-0 ruling by the full court dismissing the lawsuit filed nearly a decade ago probably puts an end to efforts by the genocide victims' descendants to compel German companies to pay off on policies sold to the victims from 1875 to 1923.

A federal appeals court will rehear a challenge to a California law that has resulted in lawsuits against insurance companies on behalf of victims of the Armenian Genocide. The state law, passed in 2000, extends the statute of limitations for life insurance claims that were never paid out to descendants of Armenian Genocide victims. California residents originally were given a deadline of Dec. 31, 2010, but legislation introduced by Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Silver Lake) extended it to Dec. 31, 2016.

An accounting firm will review 178 insurance claims as part of a deal struck in a case involving a multimillion-dollar compensation fund for descendants of Armenian Genocide victims, attorneys announced Monday. Lawyers Mark Geragos and Roman Silberfeld, who sit on opposing sides of a dispute regarding the fund, said claims for $10,000 or more will be examined to make sure there were no accounting discrepancies. Originally, Silberfeld's client, Glendale-based attorney Vartkes Yeghiayan, had sought an audit of all 1,300 claims made to a compensation fund set up by France-based insurer Axa S.A. to check for problems.

California's largest provider of workers' compensation insurance plans to lay off more than 500 employees in Glendale next year - part of an overall strategy to cut up to 1,800 jobs statewide. The government-controlled State Compensation Insurance Fund had planned to reduce expenses through negotiated concessions, consolidating offices and relocating thousands of workers, but officials said a drop in premiums paid by client companies forced the more drastic action. The agency has already closed its Burbank claims-processing office at 2400 W. Empire Blvd., moving most of the 200 jobs to Fresno and Redding, but even some of those employees could lose their jobs.

LOS ANGELES — Three women who sued a Glendale motel after suffering more than 100 bed-bug bites have settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, attorneys said Monday. Attorneys representing the three women — Nichole Eatman, Vera Domini and Regina Martocci — said they met with representatives for Rodeway Inn-Regalodge Motel, at 200 W. Colorado St., and its franchiser, Choice Hotels International Inc., last week, to reach the settlement. They filed a motion Thursday to dismiss the case, according to Los Angeles County Superior Court documents.

Prosecutors on Wednesday filed additional charges against a Glendale attorney who already faces 38 counts in connection with a 2009 auto insurance fraud investigation. The attorney, John Akopian, 39, was charged with nine more counts of insurance fraud in a case in which he allegedly filed bogus claims for staged collisions, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. He also faces an enhanced charge of aggravated while-collar crime. Akopian, along with a group of chiropractors and attorneys, were charged in October 2009 in connection with defrauding 15 insurance companies.