LOUISIANA CITIZENS MAKES EMERGENCY APPEAL TO US SUPREME COURT

Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp, the state's property insurer of last resort, has filed an emergency application to the US Supreme Court for a stay to halt the seizure of its assets. The attempt at seizure was initiated pursuant to a 2009 court judgement in which the company was ordered to pay $92.8m to 18,000 policyholders for the insurer's untimely handling of claims from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Louisiana Citizens filed the emergency application to Justice Antonin Scalia late on Monday . Earlier that day a state court judge had lifted a temporary restraining order that had blocked the seizure of assets by attorneys representing policyholders. Citizens' application said that a new stay was warranted "to preserve the status quo while this court considers the substantial questions raised in Citizens' petition for writ of certiorari". Louisiana's application to the highest court in the land noted that the Louisiana Supreme Court held that each policyholder was "entitled to recover the maximum penalty of $5,000, even though neither the class as a whole nor any individual class member had presented any evidence attempting to justify the $5,000 penalty". Citizens said that its rights to due process were violated when the Louisiana high court relieved policyholders of their "state-law burden of proving their entitlement" to the maximum civil penalty and denied the carrier an opportunity to present every possible defense. The insurer is being represented by Theodore Olson, one of the most prominent attorneys in US Supreme Court cases.