CUNA credit disability insurance - $6 MM penalty for bad faith claim denials
Dying of cancer and in hospice care, Teri Powell gave this testimony of CUNA's refusal to pay her credit disability insurance claim. Her trial attorney, Mike Abourezk, later played the video at trial, leading to $6 MM penalty against CUNA. With only weeks to live, Teri Powell decided to devote time to helping other disabled people by testifying about her experience with CUNA Mutual and exposing the company's practices. Teri Powell knew she would not live to see the trial take place. So Powell's testimony was preserved in this video in which she explained her predicament and allowed CUNA's lawyers to cross examine her. CUNA continued to insist that Powell could go back to work and wasn't entitled to disability benefits from CUNA, and continued to refuse payment. Teri Powell also knew she would never personally benefit from the case against CUNA Mutual. But as she explains in this testimony, "if they are doing this to me, they must be doing this to a lot of people, maybe people that are worse off than me. And even those though it takes a lot of energy to go through this process, I feel if I can benefit people and make people aware that they might be taken advantage or other people are being abused, this is my chance to do something about it." Teri Powell taught high school Spanish for 27 years before becoming unable to continue working and finally dying of cancer January 7, 2007. Powell's friend, Sharon McElgunn, promised Teri before her death that she would see the case through to trial. She kept the promise, and other victims all over the United States are now benefiting. On June 1, 2009, Teri Powell's attorneys, Alicia Garcia and Mike Abourezk, brought the case to trial in the Western District of South Dakota. Attorney Jim Leach testified that Powell initially came to him for help with her claim, and he discovered CUNA's denial letter was contrary to the language of the policy as well as state laws regulating claim denials . Attorneys Garcia and Abourezk presented the evidence of their three year investigation into CUNA's activities, and showed the jury documents from the claims of 18 other people where CUNA dealt with policyholders in ways similar to the Powell claim. The federal jury of 12 members returned a unanimous verdict of $6.2 million against CUNA. In her video taped testimony, Powell is asked what she wants from this lawsuit. She says she wants to know that other people are not being abused like she is being abused, and she wants this company to come clean and treat their clients with respect. Powell asks the company, "I guess I want to say, how sick do I have to be, to be disabled under CUNA?"
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