State Farm's internal emails show company executives tracked and celebrated a program that slashed wind and hail claim payments by $1.4 billion in its first full year of operation, according to 31 documents a Comanche County judge ordered unsealed in mid-August.
The documents, totaling 159 pages, are the first of 800,000 pages State Farm produced in litigation to become public. Plaintiffs' attorney Reggie Whitten, co-founder of Oklahoma City firm Whitten Burrage, said the records prove what policyholders across the metro have long suspected.
"They did a pilot in Dallas County, and it worked. They rolled it out in the whole state of Texas, and then they rolled it out in the country, which included Oklahoma," Whitten told KFOR. "In the very first year, they lowered indemnity payments to insureds $1.4 billion.…"
The case that produced the unsealing, West v. State Farm, involves a Lawton couple whose home was struck by two-inch hail on July 15, 2023. The damage was estimated at $50,000.
State Farm offered approximately $5,000, according to Oklahoma Watch.
What the documents show
Attorney Hannah Whitten read from a 2023 internal email thread showing the closed-without-payment ratio hit 39%, which she said was "directly in line with estimates." She said the documents also show State Farm saved more than $15,000 per denied or underpaid claim.
According to The Nation's reporting on the unsealed records, State Farm launched its Wind/Hail Initiative on June 26, 2020, as a pilot in Dallas County, Texas, then expanded it nationwide within six months. Nicole Manduca, the company's senior leader and director of property and casualty operations, set a goal of a 50% reduction in payouts and called the initiative her "passion project" in internal text messages, The Nation reported.
By August 2023, the initiative was being discussed at weekly meetings of a group called the "Fix Profit Task Force," convened by then-CFO Jon Farney, who was promoted to CEO in 2024.
One of the unsealed documents is a 2021 email from State Farm captive agent Tracy Haus in Louisville, Kentucky, to company leadership. "The old slogan of 'we pay what we owe, not a penny less, not a penny more' is not the case right now," Haus wrote. "We now pay really low, and customers fight to get what we owe them in more and more cases."
Oklahoma's toll
In Oklahoma alone, 27,764 policyholders were entirely denied on wind and hail claims between 2019 and 2024, according to a State Farm petition filed in the separate Hursh v. State Farm case. An additional 91,588 claims were partially denied.
Whitten Burrage has accumulated more than 1,000 cases statewide, according to The Oklahoman. The Marr Law Firm counts roughly 200 more.
State Farm serves more than half a million policyholders across Oklahoma through more than 300 local agents, according to the company's newsroom.
State Farm's response
In a statement, State Farm Corporate Communications said the company has paid more than $1 billion to Oklahoma customers for wind and hail damage over the past two years. The insurer said pending bad-faith lawsuits represent approximately 1% of the roughly 30,000 claims it has responded to over the past five years, and that trial lawyers are turning "disputed allegations into broad, misleading, conclusions."
What happens next
Judge Grant Shepherd approved a deposition of CEO Jon Farney within 24 hours of the Aug. 14 hearing. State Farm must produce all documents by Sept. 3. In a separate case, Judge Amy Palumbo set a Dec. 7, 2026, trial date for Hursh v. State Farm.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed his own lawsuit against State Farm in June 2026, asserting claims under the Oklahoma Consumer Protection Act and the state's Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, according to News On 6.
State Farm has 30 days from the court's ruling to re-designate which of the remaining 800,000 documents qualify as genuine trade secrets under Oklahoma law.
