"Shall We Not Revenge?"

"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" - The Merchant of Venice, Act III, sc. 1

In December, 1995, Paula left her home in Florida to spend the holidays with relatives in New York. During her absence someone burglarized her home, causing losses and damage of $65,000. Paula's insurer was Allstate.

The police investigated and filed a report. Paula turned in her claim with Allstate and waited. And waited. 1996 came and went with no settlement. 1997, same thing...until August, when Allstate took Paula's deposition (11 hours' worth) "in which they probed every aspect of my life from religion to ducational matters going back 45 years. I realize now this deposition was a fishing expedition to try to find ammunition they could use to deny claim."

Then in October, nearly 2 years after the burglary, Paula got her answer: Claim denied. Allstate cited several reasons, Paula says, including (1) that Paula had given away some of the items reported as stolen (Paula says no); (2) that Paula had concealed some of the items reported as stolen and intended to use them to start a business (Not true, Paula says, and is merely self-serving speculation by Allstate); and (3) that she could not prove ownership of certain items, "though I gave them hundreds of receipts and photos of boxes items came in."

Paula is 56 years old, holds an M.B.A., and is former owner of a market research firm in New York. She now lives in North Carolina, where her interests range from building a small hydro plant to generating her own power to "taking and interpreting aura photographs." Not your typical grandma...as Allstate was soon to find.

"You're In Bad Hands With Allstate" at http://www.gemhound.com sprang from Paula's smoldering dissatisfaction with the company and its tactics. Her pages are an avalanche of allegations, litigation summaries, case histories, news updates, and more. It's worth a look just to see her mastery and presentation of a staggering amount of insurance arcana, made useful and relevant for laypeople, attorneys, reporters, and anyone interesting into peering beneath the surface of insurance. This site shows what one fed-up consumer with a web site can do.

While Paula's is arguably the most comprehensive site of its type, many similar sites professing grave insurance injustice have sprung up. A couple worthy of note are "Judydoc" at

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