Texas Windstorm Insurance Association official was racist, lawyer says
A Texas Windstorm Insurance Association lawyer told a South Texas judge recently that one of the quasi-governmental agency’s top officials was a racist and his bigotry might have been a factor in denying claims made by a 98-percent minority school district that suffered damages from a storm.
In a Dec. 12 pre-trial hearing, lawyer Andrew McKinney of Houston, who is working for TWIA, faced off against Steve Mostyn, a plaintiffs’ lawyer representing the Brownsville Independent School District for unpaid claims following Hurricane Dolly in 2008.
According to a transcript of the hearing obtained Wednesday by the American-Statesman, McKinney told Judge Benjamin Euresti Jr. in Cameron County that the insurer’s person in charge of claims in the Brownsville case — now deceased Bill Knarr — had sent emails within the association’s network that were “certainly over the line in terms of being racist” and disseminated others that were “just in poor taste.” McKinney said Knarr had “issues with people who aren’t white.”
“In my view, the fact that Bill Knarr was involved in this case and the fact that Bill Knarr is or was a racist, I think that puts us on the bubble, maybe yes, maybe no, that racism played a role in how this claim was handled,” McKinney said, according to the transcript.
More at http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/texas-windstorm-insurance-association-official-was/ncPQQ/?icmp=statesman_internallink_invitationbox_apr2013_statesmanstubtomystatesmanpremium (subscription required).
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