Beyond and Above the Law

Claim for wind damage granted; both sides declare victory

PASCAGOULA, Mississippi (CNN) -- A federal judge Tuesday rejected a couple's insurance claim for Hurricane Katrina-related flood damage in a case sure to resonate with homeowners ravaged last year by the storm.

Senior District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. said the insurance policy of plaintiffs Paul and Julie Leonard of Pascagoula, Mississippi, specifically excluded flood damage.

However, Senter ruled that the couple could collect compensation from Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. for wind damage -- a total of $1,228.16. The Leonards said their Gulf Coast home incurred more than $130,000 in wind and flood damage on August 29, when Hurricane Katrina raked the Gulf Coast. (Watch the plaintiff's attorney on the next step -- 2:54)

The lawsuit argued that a Nationwide insurance policy bought by the Leonards in 2004 purported to provide full coverage for any damage typically caused by hurricanes. The lawsuit also said the insurance agent told the Leonards they did not need to purchase additional flood insurance, which is offered separately by the federal government.

Both sides claimed victory.

The Leonards' attorney, Richard Scruggs, interpreted the 13-page ruling as "a big win," despite the modest size of the award. He predicted it would set a precedent for homeowners.

"The insurance companies have been saying to everyone, under that clause that they lost today, that if you had 1 millimeter of saltwater in your home there was no coverage, even if the hurricane winds blew off your roof," he said.

"That, now, is off the playing field," Scruggs said. "They lost that, and that's going to be huge in future cases. This was a big win for us. Monetarily, it could have been more. We asked for more and thought it was justified, but a win is a win in the first game of the season, and you just take it."

In a written statement, Nationwide said, "We are very pleased that the court ruled in our favor and upheld the long-standing flood exclusion language which is foundational to traditional homeowner policies across the country."

The statement further said: "While it is unfortunate that the Leonards did not choose to purchase flood coverage, insurance carriers have an obligation on behalf of all policyholders to adjust claims based on factual evidence that supports coverage payments. We will continue to adjust claims on a case-by-case basis.

"This ruling underscores just how important it is for all policyholders to carefully read and understand the terms of the coverage they purchase," the statement said.

The Leonards filed their case in October in U.S. District Court in Southern Mississippi. It was the first to be heard among the hundreds of other Katrina-related cases against insurers, which have argued that they are not responsible for reimbursing homeowners for flood or wind damage.

Scruggs alleged that Jay Fletcher, Nationwide's sales representative, intentionally misled the couple about what their policy covered.

The judge disagreed.

"Fletcher did not materially misrepresent the terms of the Nationwide homeowners policy to the Leonards, and Fletcher did not make any statements which could be reasonably understood to alter the terms of the Nationwide policy," Senter wrote.

CNN's Megan Towey and Sean Callebs contributed to this story

An online banner advertisement that ran on MySpace.com and other sites over the past week used a Windows security flaw to infect more than a million users with spyware when people merely browsed the sites with unpatched versions of Windows, according to data collected by iDefense, a Verisign company.
Michael La Pilla, an iDefense "malcode" analyst, said he first spotted the attack Sunday while browsing MySpace on a Linux-based machine. When he browsed a page headed with an ad for DeckOutYourDeck.com, his browser asked him whether he wanted to open a file called exp.wmf. Microsoft released a patch in January to fix a serious security flaw in the way Windows renders WMF (Windows Metafile) images, and online criminal groups have been using the flaw to install adware, keystroke loggers and all manner of invasive software for the past seven months.
Internet Explorer users who visited a Web page containing this ad and whose IE was not equipped with the WMF patch would not get that warning. Rather, their machines would silently download a Trojan horse program that installs junk software in the PurityScan/ClickSpring family of adware. This stuff bombards the user with pop-up ads and tracks their Web usage. Only a little more than half of the anti-virus programs used at anti-virus testing service AV-Test.org flagged the various programs that the Trojan tried to download as malicious or suspicious.
Using software that captures and analyzes Web traffic, La Pilla found that the installation program contacted a Russian-language Web server in Turkey that tracks how many times the program was installed, presumably because most of this adware is installed by third parties who get paid for each installation. The data there indicate that the adware was installed on 1.07 million computers, La Pilla said, adding that all seven of the Internet addresses contacted by the downloader Trojan appear to be inactive at this time.

Survey: Most Blogging Is Personal

Most bloggers focus on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers while only a small percentage focus their coverage on politics, media, government or technology. So finds a national phone survey of bloggers released yesterday by Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey says that the number of adult Americans who write blogs has grown to 12 million, or about 8 percent of adult Internet users, and that readers of blogs number 57 million American adults, or 39 percent of Internet users.

When asked to identify the main subject of their blogs, 37 percent answered, "my life and experiences." Other topics were far less frequent: 11 percent focus on politics and government; 7 percent focus on entertainment; 6 percent focus on sports; 5 percent focus on general news and current events; 5 percent focus on business; 4 percent on technology; 2 percent on religion, spirituality or faith; and even fewer focus on specific hobbies, health problems or other topics. The survey did not ask about law as a specific topic.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The siblings of a doctor accused in an affidavit of murdering four patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have come publicly to her defense.

Peggy Perino and Michael Pou told CNN in an exclusive interview that their sister, Dr. Anna Pou, was a committed physician who stayed on the job despite pleas from her family to evacuate during last year's storm when levees broke and left much of New Orleans flooded.
"She said, 'There's just bedlam around here. I can't leave,' " Perino recalled her sister as saying in a cell phone call from inside Memorial Medical Center. "That was her. If you knew her, that's the way she was."
Anna Pou and nurses Lori L. Budo and Cheri Landry were arrested Monday and booked. They are accused of injecting four patients with a "lethal cocktail" of drugs on September 1, the day before Memorial Medical Center was evacuated, said Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti.
"This is not euthanasia," Foti said. "This is homicide." (Watch how a mercy killing probe led to murder charges -- 1:41)
Although no formal charges have been filed, the allegations have been referred to the Orleans Parish district attorney's office for prosecution.
Pou's attorney Rick Simmons issued a statement this week saying his client "is innocent of the charges, and we intend to vigorously contest them."
Landry's attorney, John Di Giulio, said his client plans to enter a not guilty plea and contest the charges against her.
Budo's attorney, Edward J Castaing, Jr, said that "no formal charges have been brought against her and she is entitled to the presumption of innocence."
Killers or heroes?
He added, "All of her efforts during the aftermath and nightmare of hurricane Katrina were solely intended to comfort and save patients who had been abandoned by rescue authorities. Those who were not there should not stand in judgment."
Pou's brother and sister said they cannot believe the three are being accused of murder when they say they should be called heroes instead.
"They, along with many other doctors and nurses, worked through it," Michael Pou said. "And to have this after the fact is just unbelievable from people, who in my biased opinion, have no idea what was going on -- the attorney general in particular."
After the crisis passed, their sister said little about what happened inside the hospital, the two said.
Perino said she later learned from a nurse that some inside the hospital considered her sister a hero.
"I don't remember the nurse's name, but she said, 'I just want to tell you, Dr. Pou was ... the most incredible person' she had ever seen," Perino said. "That if it weren't for her, nobody would have made it out.
"That she took complete control of the whole situation. She gave orders."
Ultimately, when Dr. Pou tells what happened, she will be considered a hero, her brother and sister said they believed.
10-month investigation
The allegations against Pou, Budo and Landry came about 10 months after the investigation into the deaths was launched.
Tests found that a lethal amount of morphine had been administered to the four patients, whose ages were given as 62, 66, 89 and 90, according to the affidavit. They were patients at Lakeside, an acute-care facility inside Memorial Medical Center.
The "lethal cocktail" consisted of morphine and midazolam hydrochloride, known by its brand name Versed, Foti said. Both drugs are central nervous system depressants.
None of the patients had been prescribed the drugs by their caregivers and -- prior to the injections -- none of the accused had treated the four, Foti said.
Since being booked on four counts of being a principal to second-degree murder, Pou -- who was released on $100,000 bond -- has spent her days calling patients and telling them that for the time being she cannot be their doctor, Perino said.
"She's very attached to all of her patients," Perino said. "They all have her cell phone numbers because she feels they need to be able to reach her at any given time."