60 Years of Claims - A Love Letter

My first experience with this publication was in the early 1970s in Miami. As a brand new CPCU, I was made editor of the newsletter of the South Florida Claims Association, called The Claimsman. The job, of course, paid nothing, but as editor, the subscription to Insurance Adjuster Magazine, founded by Kirschner in 1953, as a publication out of Seattle, Washington, was transferred to me, and the Association had permission to use material from it, including that of its two columnists, Patrick Magarick's PM Letter and B. David Hinkle's Justin Adjuster. I knew Dave Hinkle—from the education department at Crawford & Company; we all called him "Uncle Dave"—and the Miami Association featured him as keynote speaker at one of our mid-1970s claims conferences.

One job of any editor is to find good material to fill each issue. Some of the editor's job involves twisting the arms of people who say they will write an article for the publication, only to procrastinate and bail altogether, meaning the editor must fill space with his or her own material. Starting around  1975, I had a column in The Claimsman that was always published without my name or byline, which I called "The Claims-conscious Iconoclast." It covered a variety of claims subjects, but its primary intent was the argument that adjusting was not a true profession, but ought to be, and the only way that could happen would be by better claims education. The image that we were already a profession had to be smashed as the qualifications for claims adjusting continued to decline.  

At the time I was unaware that the Miami office manager was sending a copy of The Claimsman to Dave Hinkle, who was also an attorney in our home office. Dave, in turn, sent it to Merle Gors, the editor of Insurance Adjuster Magazine in Seattle. Gors asked Hinkle who wrote the column, as he wanted to use it in a 1978 issue, and Hinkle called the Miami office to inquire.

To make a long story short, within a month I found myself in the Crawford & Company home office with the fancy title of Corporate Risk & Claims Manager, and in charge of the company's internal newsletter, The Adjuster Digest (which later became The Crawford Risk Review). Dave Hinkle's "Justin Adjuster" column later became my "Iconoclast" column.

Sometime in the early 1980s, I finally met Merle Gors at a CPCU convention in Seattle. Having also been in the newspaper biz in the 50s and 60s, Merle was a typical old-fashioned reporter, camped on the 12th floor of a downtown office building with a roll-top desk and a manual typewriter. Kirschner had several other monthly or annual publications, so there was always activity in that office. I may have met Kirschner once.

When Merle later retired, Bill Thorness became editor, and it may have been about that time that the name of the magazine changed from Insurance Adjuster to Claims. Sometime during that era, the magazine was taken over by the National Underwriter Company.

Parallel Events

From the time the Iconoclast became a monthly column, I don't believe we have missed a deadline. Somewhere along the line, Kevin Quinley, CPCU joined as a columnist and started using the nickname "The Claims Coach."

In 1980, the CPCU convention was held in Honolulu, Hawaii. At that time it seemed to me that the society was primarily made up of big brokers arguing with little independent agents. Those of us in other fields of insurance, such as risk management or claims, were sort of "also rans."

At the final dinner my wife and I ended up at a table with five men, all CPCUs, from the National Underwriter Company. One was Don Malecki, who started the CPCU's Risk Management Section and who I knew was an editor for the FC&S Bulletins. Another was Bob Prahl, also a Bulletins editor who then became a claims manager for State Auto Insurance in Columbus, Ohio. His friend, Steve Utrata, was a claims manager for State Auto in Cleveland—and knew my aunt, who had worked there.

About six or eight months later I got a call from Bob, asking me to attend a meeting in Columbus. At that meeting with directors of the CPCU society we put together the CPCU Claims Section, with the responsibility of producing at least one article a year for the prestigious CPCU Journal, seminars, a session at the annual convention, and a newsletter. I became the first editor of the CPCU Claims Quarterly, and as I recall, Kathleen became a frequent contributing writer, as well as a member and chairman of the Section's Governing Committee.

Another member and chairman of that Committee was Ken Johns, CPCU. Ken was the son of Corydon T. Johns, author of "An Introduction to Liability Claims Adjusting," first published in 1965 with a second edition in 1972 by the National Underwriter Company of Cincinnati. Back before the war, both Corydon Johns and Jim Crawford were employed by Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. They had even been roommates Each started his own independent adjusting company, Johns Eastern and Crawford & Company.

Corydon Johns' textbook, along with two written by Pat Magarick, LLM., Casualty Insurance Claims and Casualty Claims Checklists, both started in 1955 with new editions periodically, were the Bibles of claims adjusters in the 1960s through the 1990s. Somewhere along the line, Claims' columnist Pat Magarick semi-retired.

Pat was extremely well-known in the claims and legal worlds, and had added a third text, "Excess Liability," a book on how to avoid bad faith, to his list. The three Magarick books were published by Clark Boardman Co. of Rochester, New York, now a Thomson Reuters West company. Sometime in 1994, I got a phone call from Pat, who was living in Highland Park, Illinois, and invited, along with my wife, Madonna, to visit him.

Pat was in his early eighties, and had been asked by Clark Boardman to get an assistant who could use a word processer, as Pat was apparently sending in updates to his textbooks typed on note paper and the backs of envelopes. Pat wanted me to take over his three textbooks, if Clark Boardman would approve, as I was not an attorney (and they were a law text publishing house).

I met with Pat's editor in Rochester, and a contract was arranged. The first job was a new edition (the fourth) of Checklists. (The 9th Edition was published last year, and is also on Westlaw.) The other two texts, one in two volumes, the other in a single volume, both updated once or twice a year, were to be rewritten, with "Casualty Insurance Claims," 4th Ed. becoming three volumes updated twice a year and "Excess Liability," 4th Ed. two volumes, renamed Excess Liability, Rights and Duties of Commercial Risk Insureds and Insurers, updated annually. With the Claims column, the CPCU Claims Quarterly, the Crawford Risk Review and my 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. but always on call Corporate Risk & Claims Department responsibilities I was driving in the driveway to meet myself driving out the driveway. Somehow, in the middle of all that, I managed to sing in an opera at Carnegie Hall and run a homeless shelter once a week.

Thank goodness for a word processor and the Internet! The risk management job took me around the world, as Crawford had expanded internationally, and we purchased insurance at Lloyd's. This gave me a love of insurance history. In 1984 the CPCU held joint seminars with the People's Insurance Company of China, and we participated in that venture. But always, claims and insurance coverage issues remained my first love. 

The Iconoclast's goal of making the claims vocation a recognized profession remains only partially completed. The Insurance Institute of America recently acquired the property certification program from Crawford's KMC on Demand, and that is a wonderful step in a professional direction. The CPCU Claims Section is another way for claims professionals to have professional recognition. And a subscription to Claims Magazine remains the best way for an adjuster to maintain up-to-date information on his or her chosen vocation.

It's hard to believe that 60 years of this publication have passed. I didn't keep in touch with Merle or Bill. Phil passed away, as has Pat, but I still correspond with Dave, Kevin and Ken, and I hear that Don is back at the FC&S Bulletins. The friends I've made with National Underwriter Co. over the years, Diana Reitz, Christina Bramlet, Phil Gusman, David Thamann and others have been invaluable resources in an "iconoclastic" world.

Insurance was around before the Greek or Roman Empires. Medieval insurance guilds operated in Europe, and the first claim I ever settled was for the Philadelphia Contributionship, founded by Ben Franklin in 1752. I have one of their original firemarks in my office. Many may look at claim adjusting as a dead end, but it is anything but that—it is as necessary in the world as any other profession. Thank goodness there is a Claims Magazine.