Body Shops Sue Over ‘Steering’

PORTLAND, Ore.--Four Oregon body shops bent out of shape over alleged steering by an insurance company have filed a lawsuit against Farmers Insurance demanding an end to the supposed practice.

Lawyer Daniel J. Gatti said that the repair operations “have exposed an ‘illegal’ but highly accepted and encouraged practice by the auto insurance industry of ‘steering’ consumers toward repair work that is inferior, inadequate and unsafe. The Oregon business owners are hoping that a jury can finally hold Farmers Insurance accountable for its continued use of deceptive and deceiving business practices, aimed at keeping independent auto repair shops from providing customers with safe, complete and full-market value for their auto repair work.”

“Farmers Insurance has publicly stated that it controls the industry and wants to place illegal caps on all repair work within its preferred network of repair shops,” said Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto Collision Centers. “Farmers Insurance has lied and manipulated to ‘steer’ business away from independent auto repair shops like mine, but it's crashed it's customers into a wall of shoddy repair work and often left them driving unsafe vehicles.”

Hansen has joined with Bill Hall Body and Frame, All in One Autobody and Mark Odell Body Shop in taking the legal action, charging “intentional interference with prospective economic relations, negligence and interference with business.” The complaint “cites numerous examples of these ‘illegal’ practices including specific false and malicious statements by Farmers to its customers who sought to take their repair work to independent shops, not on Farmers preferred list,” said Gatti.

“Considering the fact that Farmers is one of the nation’s three largest insurance companies with annual profits in excess of $576 million and assets worth multibillions of dollars, a jury will be asked to consider awarding punitive damages against Farmers and granting economic relief for losses...” said Gatti.

Farmers has yet to publicly respond to the allegations.