Today a judge did not allow a Hurricane Katrina class action lawsuit against State Farm Insurance to proceed. The judge said that even though the lawsuits appear to have similar facts (i.e. all properties were destroyed during Hurricane Katrina) they cannot be declared a class because there are many factual differences between each case.

The “class” status was sought by policyholders who wanted to speed up the process of resolving hundreds of individual lawsuits against State Farm.  The company has denied the claims, generally because its policies cover damage from wind but not rising water (which includes storm surge).