Billy Hursh’s State Farm Lawsuit: Hail Scheme and AG Probe

The Billy Hursh State Farm lawsuit is a case filed in April 2025 by a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma couple whose hail-damaged roof cost $22,000 to replace after State Farm offered about $1,400. What began as an individual dispute has become the lead case in allegations that the country’s largest home insurer ran a company-wide scheme to underpay or deny roof claims, and it now includes the Oklahoma Attorney General as an intervening party and a pending Oklahoma Supreme Court fight over how far the case can go.¹

What Happened to the Hurshes’ Roof

Billy Hursh, a 39-year-old Tulsa police lieutenant who leads his department’s SWAT negotiator team, had been a State Farm customer since he was 16. On October 4, 2023, a hailstorm hit his family’s Broken Arrow home. State Farm offered roughly $1,400 toward repairs. Eight months later a second hailstorm struck, and State Farm acknowledged new damage but said the total still fell below the family’s deductible.¹

Two independent contractors assessed the roof and recommended a full replacement. So did a contractor State Farm itself had recommended. State Farm still deemed the damage minor.² The Hurshes borrowed against their home equity to pay $22,000 for a new roof. Billy Hursh said the experience left him feeling “like a sucker” and “foolish for expecting an insurance company to hold up their end of the bargain.”³

What the Lawsuit Accuses State Farm of Doing

The lawsuit, filed in Oklahoma County District Court as case No. CJ-2025-2626 and handled by the Whitten Burrage law firm, alleges that State Farm created a “Wind Hail Model Enhancement Team” in 2020 with a goal of cutting hail claim costs by 50 percent. According to the complaint, the initiative launched in Dallas County, Texas, in June 2020, expanded to Oklahoma and at least three other hail-prone states, and went nationwide within six months.¹

At the center of the case is the claim that State Farm trained adjusters to apply internal damage definitions that never appeared in customers’ policies. Adjusters were allegedly told to classify damage as “wear and tear” unless hail had “punched through the shingle all the way down to the mat,” a much narrower standard than what policyholders would expect.⁴ The distinction matters because hail damage is a covered loss under State Farm homeowners’ policies while wear and tear is not.

The lawsuit also alleges that State Farm worked with consulting firm Accenture and engineering firm Haag Engineering to develop the narrower standards, and that managers regularly overrode adjusters’ independent assessments to ensure claims were denied. Plaintiffs’ attorneys allege State Farm “cheated hundreds of millions in Oklahoma between 2020 and 2023, and billions more in the United States.”¹ Internal documents cited in a related Tulsa case describe a claims specialist preparing to write up an assessment that would support a roof replacement on a home hit by hail measuring 1.5 to 1.75 inches, only to have management overrule the decision and deny the claim.⁵

A Former Adjuster’s Testimony

Some of the most detailed evidence comes from Amy Lanier, a State Farm claims specialist of more than 21 years. In a June 24, 2022 deposition in the related federal case Bates v. State Farm in the Western District of Oklahoma, Lanier testified that her authority to approve roof replacements was taken away by her team manager, Jacqueline Draper. Adjusters were told to send photos to Draper and wait for her decision, and were instructed not to include Draper’s name in file notes when a claim was denied.⁴

Lanier said she was forced to reclassify what she believed was hail damage as “wear and tear” and described the practice as feeling “like a coverup.” She said her conscience “was really getting to me because I would have to stand in front of an insured or call them and say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t — I can’t total your roof. It’s wear and tear.'” The environment, she said, was a primary reason she left the company.⁶

State Farm’s Response

State Farm denies the allegations. The company says its 2020 initiative was designed to “improve the accuracy, quality, and consistency of wind/hail claims handling” and to correct both overpayment and underpayment. It has characterized the wave of litigation as driven by “predatory contractors and billboard attorneys” and says it pays what it owes under policy terms.⁴ The company has noted it paid more than $1 billion to Oklahoma customers for wind and hail damage over a recent two-year period.²

The Attorney General Steps In

On December 4, 2025, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a motion to intervene in the Hursh case, accusing State Farm of a “scheme of deception” through what he called the Hail Focus Initiative. His petition alleged violations of the Oklahoma Consumer Protection Act, the Oklahoma Deceptive Trade Practices Act, the Oklahoma Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (ORICO), civil conspiracy, and unjust enrichment.⁷ Drummond alleged the company marketed policies as “full replacement-cost coverage” while implementing internal rules that left homeowners effectively underinsured, and said the matter could “cross into the criminal world” if a scheme inside company leadership could be proven.²

On December 30, 2025, District Court Judge Amy Palumbo granted the attorney general full intervention, rejecting State Farm’s argument that oversight of insurers falls exclusively to the state’s Insurance Commissioner. “Having given it extensive thought, I believe the law does allow the attorney general to intervene,” Palumbo said.⁸ The intervention gave the attorney general’s office heightened subpoena powers to reach State Farm’s internal documents.

The Supreme Court Fight

Two disputes have reached the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The first involves discovery. Plaintiffs sought 15 years of company records covering roughly 155,000 documents tied to 120,000 claims, including performance evaluations, training manuals, and a document titled “The Art of the Conversation.” State Farm called the requests “overly burdensome.” In November 2025, Judge Palumbo ordered production and warned that “discovery games are going to stop.” State Farm challenged the order, and on March 25, 2026, Supreme Court referee Cassandra Holden heard oral arguments.⁹

The second dispute is whether the attorney general’s intervention should stand. On April 27, 2026, the full court heard 40 minutes of argument. State Farm’s attorney, Mithun Mansinghani of Lehotsky Keller Cohn and Oklahoma’s former Solicitor General from 2017 to 2022, argued that the intervention violates the separation-of-powers clause of the state constitution because only Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready has authority over insurers. Solicitor General Garry Gaskins responded that the attorney general has statutory authority to represent the collective interest of insurance consumers, and that Mulready had sent a letter on January 29, 2026 inviting the attorney general’s participation.¹⁰

Justice James Winchester questioned whether the attorney general’s RICO-based claims could force State Farm employees to invoke Fifth Amendment rights at trial.¹¹ Justice James Edmondson said during the hearing that a ruling would come “soon.” Drummond’s office has said that if the court blocks the intervention, it will file a separate, independent lawsuit pursuing consumer protection and ORICO claims.¹⁰

How Big the Litigation Has Grown

The Hursh case is now the lead vehicle in a much larger fight. As of spring 2026, more than 600 lawsuits were pending against State Farm in Oklahoma, with some reports placing the total number of roof claim cases above 900.²⁹ State Farm holds about 30 percent of the Oklahoma homeowners insurance market and reported 120,755 wind and hail damage claims in the state between 2019 and 2024. Of those, 27,764 policyholders received no compensation.⁸

Related litigation has already produced sizable outcomes. Whitten Burrage previously resolved 125 cases against State Farm in a matter known as Nida v. State Farm, generally under confidential terms. One of those, involving a roof claim worth about $30,000, settled for $3 million. More recent individual settlements have reached $2 million and $3 million. In a separate 2022 federal trial, a jury ordered State Farm to pay a homeowner $325,000 for bad-faith denial plus roughly $16,000 for breach of contract.⁴

Where Things Stand

The Hursh case remains pending in Oklahoma County District Court before Judge Palumbo, with no trial date set. The Oklahoma Supreme Court has not yet ruled on either the discovery order or the attorney general’s intervention. The Oklahoma Insurance Department has been running its own investigation into roof claims for at least two years, with Commissioner Mulready setting a completion deadline of March 31, 2026, though no public findings have been announced.¹² State Farm’s net worth grew from $134 billion in 2023 to $145 billion in 2024 and was valued at $170 billion in early 2026, a figure the attorney general’s office cited in arguing the company can afford broad discovery.⁹

1
Oklahoma Watch. Long-Running Lawsuits Accuse State Farm of Billion-Dollar Hail Scheme
2
NBC News. Lawsuit Alleges State Farm Cheats Homeowners
3
Public Radio Tulsa. Long-Running Lawsuits Accuse State Farm of Billion-Dollar Hail Scheme
4
NPR. State Farm Home Insurance Hail Climate Change
5
Oklahoma Watch. Tulsa Roof Claim Provides Insight Into Alleged State Farm Scheme
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OPB. Lawsuits Accuse State Farm of Secretly Working to Cut Insurance Payouts for Hail Damage
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Oklahoma Attorney General. Case Against State Farm Over Hail Focus Initiative Scheme
8
Oklahoma Watch. Judge Allows Attorney General to Intervene in State Farm Hail Lawsuit
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Oklahoma Watch. Battle Over Cryptic State Farm Documents Reaches OK Supreme Court
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Oklahoma Watch. A Former Chief Justice Battles State Farm as Sitting Justices Weigh Insurance Giant’s Fate
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KGOU. Oklahoma Supreme Court Will Decide if Attorney General Can Step In on State Farm Case
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KGOU. State Farm Delays Left Dying Woman in Home With Holes, Hose for Water