Bout time…..

State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. agreed Tuesday to settle hundreds of lawsuits by policyholders and reopen thousands of other disputed claims, a deal potentially worth hundreds of millions of homeowners devastated by Hurricane Katrina, a company spokesman said.

State Farm spokesman Phil Supple said the company will reopen and review claims for policyholders on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast whose claims were denied but haven-t sued the company.

That part of the settlement could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars for roughly 35,000 policyholders, a person with direct knowledge of the settlement said.

“The agreement greatly reduces the time, the risk and the expense of defending multiple claims in individual litigation,” Supple said.

State Farm’s agreement with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and lawyers for more than 600 policyholders resolves a civil lawsuit that Hood filed against the company for refusing to cover damage from Katrina’s storm surge nearly 17 months ago.

The accord also resolves Hood’s criminal probe of allegations that the Bloomington, Ill.-based insurer fraudulently denied claims after the August 2005 storm.

“I hope that this settlement with State Farm will encourage other insurers to join the settlement, so that we can get a quick flow of capital into our coastal counties at this critical time,” Hood said in a statement.

Read more at MSNBC