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Ex-State Farm Agents Awarded $12.6M

SAN FRANCISCO AP repored that a Mendocino County Superior Court jury awarded $12.6 million to two former State Farm Insurance agents blocked from selling competing policies to former customers after State Farm fired them in 1999.

After concluding State Farm acted with malice toward former agents John W. Wier and Richard L. Pyorre, the jury late Monday decided State Farm should pay a total $6 million in punitive damages to the men.

The punitive damages supplement a $6.6 million award granted to the men in a jury verdict reached late last week. The jury determined State Farm should pay $3.25 million to Wier and $3.35 million to Pyorre to compensate them for lost commissions and emotional distress.

``I feel like we got our reputations back,'' Pyorre said Monday. He had been a State Farm agent for 27 years in the Mendocino County town of Fort Bragg until the insurer fired him in February 1999 for missing a mandatory ethics class.

Wier, a former State Farm agent for 12 years in Del Norte County's Crescent City, couldn't be reached Monday.

State Farm ``will review the decision to figure out what our options may be,'' said spokesman Bill Sirola. ``We really regret this issue had to end up in court.''

Superior Court Judge Richard Henderson scheduled an Oct. 11 hearing to review the verdict and damages.

The verdict, handed out in a courtroom located about 120 miles north of San Francisco, is a blow for State Farm. The Bloomington, Ill.-based company had been feuding with the two agents since firing them in 1999.

The carrier sued the former agents in 2000, alleging the men had engaged in economic espionage by drawing upon information they collected while working as State Farm agents to sell policies for Mercury Insurance.

Before filing the civil suit, State Farm at one point asked the FBI to open a criminal investigation into the former agents' conduct, according to court documents.

State Farm argued that all policyholder information collected by its sales agents constitutes company-owned trade secrets.

While agreeing the policyholder files were valuable to State Farm, the jury decided by a 10-2 vote that the information didn't necessarily belong to the company.