Judge Halts Mass. Auto Reform Effort

State Superior Court Judge Raymond J. Brassard earlier this month issued a stay of Ms. Bowler's plans to apportion the state's high risk drivers to carriers on a random basis. The move would be accomplished on an executive basis, rather than through a change by the legislature.

His injunction was issued following a request filed by a group of state auto writers and a consumer group who contested Ms. Bowler's legal authority to make the changes.

Mr. Goetchus said he was confident the department's effort will succeed in the state's highest court, as Ms. Bowler would like, or in Superior Court. "We are confident the court will find the plan falls within existing laws," he said.

The division is not concerned by the stay, he said, because if the case is heard in Superior Court it will have given the judge time to familiarize himself with the state's complex insurance law.

High risk drivers in the state are currently assigned to agencies and backed by reinsurance through the Commonwealth Automobile Reinsurers program. The proposed assigned risk insurance plan will place high risk drivers with insurers in proportion with to their voluntary market share, while the CAR program will be phased out on Jan. 1, 2008.

Under the Bowler proposals, so-call "subscription requirements" as a basis for involuntary agencies assignment to insurers will be eliminated to end what the commissioner termed "the practice of insurers terminating voluntary agencies or acquiring other insurers' agencies to maintain or improve competitive position."

National property-casualty trade groups have been behind the reform efforts while local writers have opposed them.

Steve D'Amato of the Cambridge-based Center for Insurance Research said that those writers who actually issue auto policies in the state fear that any change to assign high risk drivers randomly to carriers without changing the current "fix and establish" rating system will result in a flood of such high drivers, and as a result the state writers will bear a greater burden.

"It is great for those companies such as Geico and Progressive to say this is a great first step, but [the question is] will they come in and write," Mr. D'Amato said.

Plans are underway to replace the current rating system with a more market-oriented one, but that would require legislative approval, which is anything but certain.