SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Bourhis & Wolfson respectfully urge
 the 47 state Insurance Commissioners who have not yet done so, to refrain from
 signing on to the Multistate Settlement with disability insurer UnumProvident
 (UNM-NYSE) and a few of its subsidiaries.  Although it supposedly promises to
 reopen 215,000 claims closed pursuant to a long list of unfair claims handling
 practices, the proposed Settlement is totally inadequate and fails to protect
 the hundreds of thousands of disabled insureds whose disability benefits were
 wrongfully denied or terminated.  The following is a list of same of the many
 deficiencies in the proposed Settlement:
 
     1) It provides no admission or findings of wrongful conduct by
        UnumProvident et al;
 
     2) It provides for no outside monitoring of compliance with the
        Settlement.  In fact, the proposed reevaluation process permits the
        same people who first made the unreasonable decision to deny a claim to
        review their own decision;
 
     3) It forces claimants to request a reassessment of their claim, and to
        essentially prove their case again by providing more documents.
        Reassessment should be automatic based on the information in the
        companies' files;
 
     4) It exempts from reassessment and ignores cases in which UnumProvident
        pressured its insureds to "settle" their claims for pennies on the
        dollar;
 
     5) It lets the company off scott free with a meager $15 million fine --
        barely a slap on the wrists to a company that boasts $10 billion in
        annual revenue;
 
     6) It forces insureds to waive all rights to recover for interest of past
        due claims, for emotional distress, attorneys fees, and punitive
        damages to which they may be entitled because of UnumProvident's
        wrongful denial of benefits;
 
     7) It fails to cover UnumProvident claim denials on policies originally
        written by John Hancock, The Equitable, General American, New York
        Life, Met Life, National Life, Vermont Life, and others. These policies
        account for as much as half of UnumProvident's disability business.
 
     8) It fails to call for the resignations of the top executives who
        orchestrated and enacted the very practices the Settlement seeks to
        remedy.
 
 
     Bourhis & Wolfson encourages all interested individuals to contact their
 state Insurance Commissioner to urge them to reject the proposed Settlement.
 For more information, contact Bourhis & Wolfson at 1-800-264-2082.
 
 
      Bourhis & Wolfson
      800-264-2082
      1050 Battery Street
      San Francisco, CA 94111
      www.Bourhis-Wolfson.com
      www.InsuranceConsumers.com
 
     CONTACT:  Ray Bourhis or Alice Wolfson, both of Bourhis & Wolfson,
 +1-415-392-4660.
 
 

SOURCE  Bourhis & Wolfson