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May 9, 2003/Iyar 7 5763, Vol. 55, No. 37
Holocaust case may set precedent
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
LOS ANGELES - When Suzanne Weiner-Zada was growing up in Hungary, her father, a wealthy lumber merchant, took out eight insurance policies with Assicurazioni Generali.
Italy's Generali, one of the world's largest insurance companies, operated exten-sively in pre-World War II Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe.
Weiner-Zada survived Bergen-Belsen and Ausch-witz, and eventually settled in Los Angeles. Until two years ago, she didn't try to redeem the policies, because "I didn't want blood money," she said.
When she finally did apply, she received a settlement offer of $10,533, later raised to $16,012. The figures were ridiculously low, she said, but what really set off the feisty 73-year-old was Generali's demand that she sign a statement to the effect that the money was being paid out as an act of charity and not as a legal obligation.
Weiner-Zada is among eight Holocaust survivors and their descendants from the Los Angeles area who filed a lawsuit who in early April against Generali in Los Angeles Superior Court. They claim that for more than 50 years the company stonewalled their requests for payments on policies or fobbed them off with meager settlement offers.
Attorney William Shernoff, who represents the eight Californians and has been confronting Generali for five years, estimates that the policies in the current lawsuit may now be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and may reach millions if a jury ultimately adds bad faith and punitive damages to its verdict.
But that may be only the tip of the iceberg. If the eight win their case, they may be followed by tens of thousands of other plaintiffs seeking billions of dollars from Generali and other European insurance companies.
The outcome of the Los Angeles lawsuit will likely have little affect upon Valley Holocaust survivors, said David Kader, president of the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association. However, the "political consequences" could be substantial, he noted.
Such cases put "increased political pressure on these insurance companies to do something" about the hundreds of thousands of claims, he said.
Editor Barry Cohen contributed to this story.
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