A professional photographer, Edward Michaels, has reached a settlement in his lawsuit against Farmers Insurance Exchange for breaching their obligations to compensate him for the theft of 2,000 images along with his equipment in 2020.
In court papers filed on Friday, Edward Michaels’ attorney disclosed that an agreement had been reached two days prior with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael P. Linfield. The specific terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Farmers Insurance attorneys stated in their court papers that they had already paid for the stolen equipment but argued that the digital images had no commercial value and therefore, no compensation was provided for their loss.
Edward Michaels, a professional photographer with over four decades of experience, filed the lawsuit in June 2021. Although he is mostly retired, some prints of his work can be purchased for hundreds of dollars from the art website Saatchi.com.
In January 2020, thieves stole Michaels’ camera, lenses, computer, and external drive containing over 2,000 digital image files, which represented a significant portion of his life’s work. Unfortunately, none of the stolen items were recovered.
Michaels purchased a policy from Farmers in February 2018 with $75,000 in coverage. He was assured by an agent that his digital images were covered under this policy, according to the lawsuit.
Due to concerns about the coverage limit, Michaels contacted the same agent and agreed to a premium increase to raise the coverage for his electronic equipment and data to $125,000, as stated in the lawsuit.
Following the theft of his equipment and images, Michaels filed a claim with Farmers.
However, Farmers informed Michaels that although the loss of his digital image files was covered by the $125,000 electronic media coverage, they determined that the value of his 2,000 digital image files was zero, which the lawsuit described as an “astounding exercise of bad faith.”
Michaels was taken aback by this response and wrote a letter to Farmers Group Inc. CEO Jeffrey J. Dailey. Dailey thanked Michaels for his long-term patronage and promised to investigate the matter and identify any mistakes that were made.
On February 18, 2021, Farmers contacted Michaels again and informed him that they would not be making any additional payments for the loss of his digital photos, stating that they had no associated value and were closing their file on the matter.
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