On December 8, Oklahoma Insurance Department Commissioner Glen Mulready made a remarkable disclosure.
In a press release responding to Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s intervention in one of hundreds of roof claim lawsuits that have been brought against State Farm, Mulready revealed that the insurance department has been conducting an investigation of Oklahoma roof claims for at least two years. The investigation, Mulready specified, included third-party engineers dispatched to inspect insurance adjusters’ work.
Offering details of an ongoing investigation is a problem; Section 309.4 of Title 36 forbids publicizing the details of open insurance investigations.
The press release was not the only time that Mulready disclosed the active investigation.
Oklahoma Watch obtained a recording of a November 8, 2023, meeting at the insurance department. Speaking to a roomful of insurance professionals, Mulready told a story.
One day, he recounted, he presented to his executive team a series of numbers on a glass presentation board.
“I wrote a bunch of numbers,” Mulready said. “The first five were, like, 11, 12, 10, 13. And the sixth number was 53.”
His team did not recognize the numbers. He explained that they represented the annual number of roof-claim complaints they had received about a single insurance company. The sudden spike of complaints in the sixth year was passed to the department’s market conduct division, Mulready said, which ruled out weather and increased market share as explanations for the dramatic rise in complaints.
An investigation was initiated, Mulready said. As with the December 8 press release — issued in response to news of State Farm lawsuits — Mulready specified neither the start date of the investigation nor the company being investigated.
But the implication was clear.
Regardless of whether Mulready’s disclosures were legal, the suggestion that the department was in the process of investigating State Farm was heavily ironic. In a separate bad-faith case that is still ongoing, the insurance department has fought tooth and nail to prevent an investigation of the state’s largest writer of homeowners insurance.
Mulready did not respond to an interview request for this story.
Steam Came Pouring Out
It started with a hiss.
In January 2023, Bradley and Farah Cox were at home in Edmond with their daughters, getting ready for bed. Bradley Cox heard a faint sound.
The hissing noise tracked to his home office, where one wall felt particularly warm. There was a smell in the air, of humidity and damp sheetrock. Bradley Cox noticed that a part of the floor had begun to buckle, and the hot wall appeared bent.
He poked a small hole in the wall, and steam came pouring out. He understood what it meant.
“I knew that we would have to get our whole house replumbed,” Bradley Cox said. “I knew it would be a big deal. And I knew it was going to be a tremendous fight. That’s why I looked for help.”
Their Last Year Together
It was the third Oklahoma home of Bradley and Farah Cox. High school sweethearts from Duncan, Bradley Cox ran a third-generation dry cleaning business in Oklahoma City, and Farah Cox was a speech pathologist.
State Farm had insured them for 30 years. Their first State Farm agent was Bradley Cox’s aunt.
The house would remain torn up for a year. On the ground floor, there were holes in the floor everywhere and the water stayed off. To make do, they ran a garden hose from the hot water heater.
Then things got worse. Farah Cox fell ill.
There was blood in her urine, mysterious abdominal swelling. Bradley Cox recalled harrowing scenes of his wife bleeding in the bathroom with only the hose to help him tend to her.
The diagnosis of terminal kidney cancer would not come for months because kidney cancer is rare in younger patients, Bradley Cox said.
“That whole year, I didn’t know it was our last year together — and we’re living in that,” Bradley Cox said.
He fought back tears as he described what he characterized as State Farm’s strategy of artificially protracting the claim as Farah grew sicker and sicker.
“That last year, it was tremendous stress,” Bradley Cox said. “As the man, you want to be the provider and have things in order. And I really couldn’t because we were at a standstill on the claim.”
It’s Not About the Money
The total damages to the Coxes’ home was $110,438.19. To date, State Farm has paid out $51,656.79.
“It’s not about the money,” said Ian Rupert, the public adjuster that Bradley Cox engaged early in the claim process. “It’s all about the delay. Insurance companies have a duty to properly and swiftly investigate claims. That did not happen here.”
Through former business contacts and an earlier State Farm claim, Bradley Cox knew of Rupert’s 10-year-old public adjuster firm, Ian’s Enterprise. He called Rupert not long after steam began billowing out of his walls.
On board from the start, Rupert watched as State Farm ignored numerous deadlines to respond to the claim, to provide written acceptance or denial of it, and to complete an investigation. Adherence to these deadlines was mandated by Oklahoma law, Rupert said.
The first payment from State Farm didn’t come for a full six months.
“That’s when we started escalation,” Rupert said.
By escalation, he meant appealing to the Oklahoma Insurance Department for help. The following month, a letter signed by Bradley and Farah Cox was sent to the insurance department.
“Woefully underpaying a claim or creating unnecessary delay is a direct violation of an insurer’s duties to provide in good faith, a fair and equitable settlement and prompt investigation,” the letter said.
The following month, the department responded with a pro forma letter denying that they had the ability to assist with claim determination. The letter made no mention of missed deadlines enforced by the insurance department.
“We appreciate your position but our review of this file does not indicate the company violated any laws or regulations as enforced by this body,” the letter read.
Rupert and the Coxes responded by filing a writ of mandamus in Oklahoma County District Court. A writ of mandamus is a legal remedy that, if successful, can compel a government actor to comply with duties imposed by statute.
In other words, the Coxes attempted to force Mulready to do his job.
It Depends on What the Word “Hear” Means
Specifically, they requested that the commissioner investigate State Farm.
“Defendant has failed to fulfill his statutory obligations,” the Coxes’ petition read. “Petitioners respectfully request this Court assume original jurisdiction and … [order] a complete investigation.”
The irony is in the sequence of events.
On Nov. 8, 2023, as revealed in the recording, Mulready told a group of insurance professionals that an investigation of State Farm roof claims had been underway for some time.
Six days later, on Nov. 14, 2023, the Coxes’ filed a writ of mandamus asking for an investigation of State Farm.
Six weeks after that, Mulready responded to the writ with a vigorous defense of his right to not investigate.
The department’s response to the writ hinged on the insurance commissioner’s discretionary powers as detailed in Section 307 of Title 36 of Oklahoma law. Section 307 granted the commissioner’s office-wide powers in terms of how and whether to investigate, the response said.
“The statute makes clear that the Commissioner is authorized with discretion in the manner he handles matters involving insureds’ complaints,” the reply read.
In other words, the commissioner can do whatever he wants — investigate or not investigate.
The reply also offered a fine parsing of the word “hear.”
The department did not contest that the law specified that the commissioner shall hear complaints, but argued that “hear” did not mean “hearing.”
“While the statute uses the word ‘hear,’ in no way does it mandate the Commissioner perform that duty via an in-person, formal hearing,” the reply read.
Like the department’s letter to the Coxes, the response made no mention of whether State Farms’ protracted delays violated laws enforced by the insurance department.
“Petitioners’ actual dispute is against State Farm,” the reply said.
State Farm did not respond to a request to interview the section manager initially assigned to the Coxes’ case.
To the End of Her Life
Bradley Cox said the stress and frustration of the delays led Farah Cox to conclude they should simply sell their house without repairs and take the loss.
“I knew it could be fixed, but in her mind the house was broken,” Bradley Cox said. “We were married for 30 years. Losing her was always my worst fear.”
Farah Cox remained frustrated to the end of her life, Bradley Cox said. She died in June.
Bradley Cox saw little hope in taking the fight to State Farm.
“They can afford to drag all this out,” Bradley Cox said, deep emotion punctuating his words. “They have a whole room full of lawyers. And it’s just paperwork for them. For us, it’s our life, and we’re there living in the rubble of all this. They don’t care about that.”
On Oct. 30, Judge Natalie Mai sustained the insurance department’s request to dismiss Bradley Cox’s writ of mandamus.
Rupert said the case isn’t over. Mai’s order has not yet been entered, and court documents reveal that the parties remain in dispute over what was said in court.
A final hearing is scheduled for March 31, the same day as Mulready’s self-imposed deadline for the insurance department’s roof claim investigation.
Regardless of Mai’s decision, Rupert pledged that he and Bradley Cox would continue the fight.
“We’re going to appeal it no matter what,” Rupert said.
Enforce the Deadlines
Oklahoma Watch submitted an open records request for all market conduct investigations performed by the insurance department in the last five years. The department provided information on four investigations. No investigation has been completed since May 2022, and the average investigation length was 19 months.
Per Mulready’s private and public statements, an investigation of roof claims has been ongoing since at least November 2023 and will be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
Twenty-eight months, perhaps longer.
For Rupert, the protracted investigation was another dose of delay that favored insurance companies.
Rupert acknowledged that proposed laws would shorten the time available to insurance companies to process claims and conduct investigations. In that regard, however, the Coxes’ story served as a cautionary tale, he said.
“All that’s good, but only if the commissioner enforces the deadlines,” Rupert said.
Rupert was similarly put off by the department’s lengthy investigation of roof claims. As the investigation dragged on, he said, State Farm was denying more claims.
“I find it repugnant that the commissioner would have a secret market conduct study going on for two-plus years while insureds are being damaged in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Rupert said. “How are they going to get their money back? They’re not, unless the commissioner somehow forces the company to re-open all of those claims.”
Still grieving the loss of his high school sweetheart, Bradley Cox agreed that the problem was larger than what State Farm had done to the home he built for his family.
“It’s unfortunate that people just get run over by State Farm,” Bradley Cox said. “There’s no telling how many people just get run down, and nobody does anything.”
