Like a Bad Neighbor, State Farm Ain’t There: Refuses to Pay Out Fire Victims For Personal Property Without Detailed Inventory List
State Farm has chosen to ignore California State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s recommendation that all insurance companies pay 100% of personal property coverage rather than asking fire victims to itemize all contents.
As Breitbart News has reported, Lara asked all insurance companies to pay their customers 100%, rather than the state minimum of 30%, before requiring them to itemize everything they may have owned — a process that the New York Times called a new form of “trauma” for those already struggling with the fact that they lost their homes.
Lara’s deadline was February 28. His office did not return requests for comment about which companies had complied.
State Farm, however, did not. It sent an email to some customers, which was forwarded to Breitbart News, saying: “I wanted to take a moment to inform you that, at State Farm, we will be unable to honor the full contents limit for our insureds unless a comprehensive inventory list is provided. … Currently, we can offer up to 50% … upfront.”
Mark and Sam look at the remains of their home which burned in the Palisades Fire on January 28, 2025, in Pacific Palisades, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
As Breitbart News has also reported, there are several insurance companies that have already paid 100% coverage.
In the 2018 Woolsey Fire, near Malibu, State Farm covered 75% of losses before itemization. Then-California State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones was able to provide a detailed list of companies and their responses to him.
Separately, James O’Keefe’s OMG News released an undercover recording Wednesday of a State Farm executive who appears to say that Pacific Palisades, one of the hardest-hit communities in the recent fires, never should have been built at all.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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