UPDATE JULY 14, 2005

On June 27, 2005, Judge Mohr continued the trial date in Sekly [previously Bednar] v. Allstate to September 12, 2005, with directions to the parties to continue their ongoing negotiations, involving a mediator as may be necessary, to attempt to reach a final settlement as to all issues in the case.  As soon as we hear more, we will update this website.

BEDNAR VS. ALLSTATE INSURANCE
CLAIMS ADJUSTER OVERTIME LITIGATION
DECEMBER 2004 STATUS INFORMATION

THIS HAS BEEN A very exciting and productive year for this case. We brought a motion for Summary Adjudication of the issue of whether or not Class Members were entitled to overtime pay. The motion was granted. Judge Mohr held that Allstate Claims administrative employees and are therefore entitled to overtime pay. Allstate attacked that ruling by filing a petition for a Writ of Mandate in the Court of Appeal. That Petition was summarily rejected and Judge Mohr’s ruling stands, however Allstate will still have the right to appeal this ruling at the conclusion of trial.

The only issue left for trial is the total amount of money Allstate owes to the Class Members. THE TRIAL OF THAT FINAL ISSUE IS CURRENTLY SET TO BEGIN ON FEBRUARY 28, 2005. Allstate is attempting to have that date continued. We will resist its efforts.

In order to get ready for trial, many of your fellow Class Members have been of great assistance to us. The trial will concentrate on the issue of damages. The law permits us to prove class wide damages by presenting the jury with a scientifically valid sampling of Class Member testimony which our experts will then use to testify as to the damages due the entire class. To obtain this sample, Class Counsel decided to depose a large sample of Class Members so that the testimony we received would be under oath. This is unusual, since we were actually deposing our own clients. Of course, to complete this huge task, we needed the cooperation of the Class Members who were randomly selected to have their depositions taken.

We will complete these depositions on December 10th. By that time we will have taken over 260 Class Member depositions. To do this, all three plaintiff law firms participated in depositions throughout California. There were days where we had three separate deposition “tracks” going, with each track completing up to 5 depositions in a day. Over a dozen different plaintiff attorneys from the 3 firms participated in this important exercise.

None of this would have been possible without the cooperation of the over 260 Class Members who gave their time to have their depositions taken, whether in Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Bakerfield, Anaheim, Los Angeles, Agoura Hills, Lancaster, San Diego or Riverside. Our thanks to each and every one of you who provided such important testimony for this case.

We will now be concentrating our energies on our final efforts to prepare for our February trial. We have been working toward this trial for over 4 years and we will be prepared to present the most complete and comprehensive case possible to the jury.

As soon as the trial is complete, we will provide you with another update.

All of us wish you and yours a safe, peaceful and happy holiday season

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