$500,000 Jury Award Against Allstate Upheld

February 14 2003
By Lynne Tuohy
Courant Staff Writer

Oswald Carrol survived the 1997 fire that destroyed most of the Norwalk house he and his wife had lived in for 25 years. But the treatment he received by investigators for Allstate Insurance Co. - who concluded he had set the fire - was so egregious that it undermined his health and disrupted his marriage.

The state Supreme Court agreed Thursday with Carrol and upheld a jury award to him of $500,000 for the negligent infliction of emotional distress by the Allstate investigators and the company's handling of the claim.

The Carrols did not live to savor their legal triumph. Oswald Carrol - so impoverished that he lived out of his truck for a while - died soon after attending arguments in the case last September, at the age of 64. His wife died last summer.

"It was outrageous. It truly was," the Carrols' lawyer, Frederic S. Ury, said Thursday of Allstate's handling of their claim. "Allstate [investigators] made up their minds when they walked in the door they weren't going to pay. ...They hired a fire investigator to reconstruct the fire who never reached a conclusion on how the fire started."

The Supreme Court ruling also took note of trial testimony suggesting that Allstate special investigator Eric Shadbegien may have been motivated by racial bias against Carrol, who was African American. Carrol testified that when another agent asked Shadbegien who owned the house, Shadbegien replied, "The black guy, Mr. Carrol. The son of a bitch is mine." Carrol testified Shadbegien consistently made him feel like a criminal, and insinuated he had obtained his vehicles through questionable activity.

Allstate had hired an independent fire expert, Thomas Haynes, to evaluate the cause of the fire. "The jury could have inferred from Shadbegien's testimony that Haynes had a tendency to find arson as the cause of suspicious fires and to ignore facts counter to the conclusion of arson so that [Allstate] would continue to employ Haynes frequently," Justice Christine Vertefeuille wrote, in the court's unanimous opinion.

Attorney Linda Morkan, who represents Allstate in the case, said Thursday, "We have no comment on the court's decision."

Carrol was in his basement late morning Jan. 21, 1997, reading Scriptures for a prayer study group he attended weekly, when he heard a bang. He thought it was his wife returning from shopping, and continued reading. Soon, he thought he smelled something burning. He checked and found a container of kerosene he'd purchased the night before ablaze in another part of the cellar. Unbeknown to him at the time, the clerk at the store had mistakenly filled the container with gasoline, not kerosene. The pilot light of a nearby stove had ignited the gas fumes hovering over other contents of the room.

Carrol tried in vain to douse the flames with a coat. He picked up the flaming container and threw it through his basement door, yelling to a neighbor to call the fire department.

Carrol suffered burns to both forearms.

Allstate paid for the extensive damage done to the house and Edna Carrol's half of lost property, but refused to pay $26,468 in personal property claims, asserting that Oswald Carrol set the fire.

Ury hired fire expert John Barracato on Carrol's behalf to determine the cause of the fire.

Although Haynes said he could not pinpoint the source of ignition, Barracato used Allstate's own videotape of the fire scene to show jurors how a pilot light from a nearby stove ignited the fumes wafting from the fuel container.

Barracato even pointed out the clear char line showing the path from stove to container.

The Supreme Court did vacate the jury's award of an additional $60,000 in punitive damages against Allstate for the intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court ruled that Allstate's conduct did not rise to the "extreme and outrageous" level required for the finding.

But the high court ruled there was sufficient evidence to sustain both the finding of negligent infliction of emotional distress and the size of the award.

The justices said the jury reasonably could have found that the Allstate investigation "was hasty, incomplete and ill-reasoned," tainted by racial bias and that it caused Carrol severe emotional distress.

"The fire itself was a disaster," Carrol testified. "But for [Allstate] to come along and accuse me of wrongdoing in this fire, that was devastating to me personally. I went to bed and I couldn't sleep. I had nightmares. I thought my life was just, had just unraveled before my very eyes. ...We have been through three and a half years of hell. That's what we've been through."

Ury described Carrol as a very religious and very special person.

"He commanded respect," Ury said. "It just hurt him no end when Allstate accused him of arson. But he had a great attitude. He always thought we would win.

"He would be thrilled today." Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant

We can make the worm turn!!!