State Farm: 100 Lawyers, 179 Days to Show Its Roof Claims

Nine new court filings just entered The Hail Files archive. The most revealing one was written by State Farm.

Oklahoma City — September 10, 2026. State Farm Fire and Casualty Company has told an Oklahoma judge that answering a homeowner’s questions about how it handles roof claims would take “a review team of 100 attorneys working ten-hour days” nearly 179 business days, cost about $11.6 million, and push past the December 7 trial date. The homeowners, Billy and Lacy Hursh of Broken Arrow, say State Farm owes them roughly $22,000 for storm damage to their roof.

That is not a plaintiff’s accusation. It is State Farm’s own emergency motion, filed August 31 in Oklahoma County District Court (Case No. CJ-2025-2626, Judge Amy Palumbo), and it is one of nine documents added today to The Hail Files, the free public archive of the State Farm litigation maintained by Allied Emergency Services.

TL;DR: In its own filing, State Farm disclosed that it received 117,019 wind and hail claims in Oklahoma between 2019 and 2025, closed 26,089 of them without paying a dollar, has already spent more than $1 million on document discovery in a $22,000 case, and may not be able to finish before trial. Separately, the court denied State Farm’s attempt to keep CEO Jon Farney out of a deposition, a Comanche County judge struck State Farm’s practice of stamping every page “Confidential,” and a September 28 hearing will decide whether documents plaintiffs describe as showing “billions in indemnity decreases” become public.

What did State Farm reveal about Oklahoma roof claims?

To argue that discovery is too burdensome, State Farm had to put numbers on the table. From the emergency motion and the sworn declaration of Jay Thorpe, a State Farm technology analyst:

State Farm’s own framing of that last comparison: “Plaintiffs would have to recover 50 times their contract damages to equal the amount State Farm has already spent on document discovery in this case.”

The company asked for a 180-day extension, or alternatively to answer only for Tulsa County, to answer from a “statistically valid sample” of 50 to 100 claim files, to produce in phases, or to make the homeowners share the cost. It also warned the court, in its own words, that the extension “will necessarily extend beyond the current trial setting of December 7, 2026.”

More than one in five Oklahoma wind and hail claims closed with nothing paid, according to State Farm’s own count. Whether that number reflects legitimate below-deductible losses or something else is exactly what the Hursh plaintiffs are trying to find out — and exactly what State Farm says would take 100 lawyers most of a year to answer.

Will State Farm’s CEO have to testify?

Yes, as things stand. The court minute from September 1, attached to a September 8 filing, records Judge Palumbo’s ruling: State Farm’s motion to quash the deposition of CEO Jon Farney is denied. The deposition is to take place within 30 days, limited to four hours, with more time available on request. The hearing began after the judge had presided over an all-day jury trial and ran to nearly 5 PM.

Three other State Farm executives — Wensley Herbert, Kathy Ress and Scott Welsh — were deposed in Hursh on August 26, 27 and 28. According to State Farm’s September 10 reply in the related West case, they will sit again in Bloomington, Illinois, State Farm’s headquarters, on September 15, 16 and 17. State Farm says Ms. Ress’s Hursh deposition ran six and a half hours and that she testified she was not involved in the Fire Model Enhancement (“FME”) initiative at the center of the case.

What are the “document dump” and “blanket confidential” fights about?

Every page State Farm has produced was stamped “Confidential” — 687,000 documents in the West case and, plaintiffs told the court, every document in Hursh. From the August 4 hearing transcript, attached to plaintiffs’ August 26 reply:

“If there was a dictionary definition of ‘document dump’ we have a prime example from State Farm, that’s a fact.”

Plaintiffs’ counsel showed the judge blank pages marked confidential and said they believe State Farm is using “white box” redactions, where a reader cannot tell whether a page was redacted or was simply blank. State Farm’s counsel, in emails attached to the same filing, said the volume made request-by-request labeling impossible and that “we do not agree to withdraw our confidentiality designations.”

In Comanche County, Judge Grant Sheperd had already ruled. His August 20 order, attached to State Farm’s September 3 motion, struck State Farm’s blanket designation outright — “A uniform, undifferentiated designation applied to every page of the production does not reflect the ‘bona fide determination made in good faith’ that Paragraph 1 of the Protective Order requires” — de-designated 31 specific exhibits (the ones now in this archive), and gave State Farm 30 days to justify anything it wants to keep secret, document by document. Anything not re-designated by the deadline “shall no longer be subject to the Protective Order and is DE-DESIGNATED.”

That deadline is September 21. On September 3, State Farm asked for 30 more days, saying it must re-review 55,913 documents while its vendor hosts “over a million” more documents across Oklahoma State Farm cases with “a review team of over 100 attorneys,” and while State Farm answers “at least 10 other discovery orders.” The homeowners oppose the extension. The ruling is pending.

What do the plaintiffs say the sealed documents show?

This part is allegation, not finding, and State Farm disputes it. In their August 26 reply, the Hursh plaintiffs describe exhibits still under seal as including “an email boasting of billions in indemnity decreases,” a calculation that declining to pay one percent of claims yields “5k claims at $15,769 avg severity or $78.8 million,” and documents “directing managers to review roof replacement recommendations in order to ‘reduce coverage'” while tracking the resulting savings. Plaintiffs argue none of that is a trade secret and that State Farm, which filed “no evidence. Not one affidavit. Not one declaration,” has forfeited its designations.

Judge Palumbo will hear that motion on September 28 at 9:00 AM. If plaintiffs prevail, those exhibits become public record.

What happens next — the calendar

• September 15–17: Herbert, Ress and Welsh depositions in Bloomington (West v. State Farm).
• September 21: West re-designation deadline. State Farm has asked to move it to about October 21; ruling pending.
• September 28, 9:00 AM: Hursh hearing on striking the blanket confidentiality designation and de-designating the sealed exhibits.
• By about October 1: CEO Jon Farney’s four-hour deposition, per the September 1 minute order.
• November 19: pretrial conference (the date the parties discussed in chambers, per State Farm’s motion; not yet entered).
• December 7: trial — the date State Farm now says its own discovery timeline may not meet.

Want to know the moment any of these produce a document? The archive has a free alert list: one email per development, filings and unsealed documents only, no marketing, one-click unsubscribe. Sign up on the archive landing page. When the September 28 ruling lands, subscribers get the documents before the news writes about them.

What does this mean if you have a State Farm roof claim?

Allied Emergency Services is a licensed storm damage restoration contractor serving Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. We are not lawyers, adjusters or public adjusters, and nothing here is legal or insurance advice. These cases are about Oklahoma claims; whether the practices described exist elsewhere is a question the documents don’t answer yet.

What the documents do show is why your own record matters. Twenty-six thousand Oklahoma claims closed at zero. The homeowners in Hursh say their full roof replacement was denied; State Farm is being asked to say how many other roof replacements were denied before a lawsuit and paid after one. If a storm hits your home, photograph the roof and every soft-metal component (vents, gutters, flashing) before anyone touches it, get a written inspection from a contractor who documents damage to a standard, keep every letter and estimate, and read the primary sources instead of relying on anyone’s summary — including ours. Our guide to how the storm damage insurance claim process works walks through the steps.

Read the nine new documents

All nine are OCR’d, searchable and free in The Hail Files:

1. State Farm’s emergency motion for a 180-day extension (Hursh, Aug 31, 41 pp.) — the numbers above, plus the Thorpe and Consilio declarations.
2. Plaintiffs’ reply on striking the blanket confidentiality assertion (Hursh, Aug 26, 60 pp.) — with the Protective Order, counsel emails and the July 28 and Aug 4 hearing transcripts.
3. Plaintiffs’ September 8 response with the September 1 minute order (Hursh, 9 pp.) — the CEO ruling.
4. Notice of the September 28 hearing (Hursh, Sept 3).
5. State Farm’s motion to extend the re-designation deadline, with Judge Sheperd’s August 20 order (West, Sept 3, 24 pp.).
6. State Farm’s reply on consolidating the executive depositions (West, Sept 10, 39 pp.).
7. State Farm’s reply seeking a deposition-conduct protocol (Hursh, Aug 25).
8. Plaintiffs’ application to file under seal (Hursh, Aug 25).
9. Amended notice of the roofing contractor’s deposition (West, Aug 28) — State Farm deposed Derek Franklin of Legacy Roofing & Construction on September 10.

The full collection — now 69 documents — is at docs.alliedemergencyservices.com, with the trial calendar on Trial Watch.

Frequently asked questions

How many wind and hail claims did State Farm receive in Oklahoma?

State Farm’s own August 31, 2026 filing states 117,019 property wind/hail claims with dates of loss between January 1, 2019 and November 30, 2025, and 121,258 with dates of loss between January 1, 2021 and July 6, 2026.

How many of those claims were closed without payment?

26,089, according to the same filing — claims with a $0.00 payment that were “Closed Without Payment.”

Is the State Farm trial still set for December 7, 2026?

Yes, as of September 10. State Farm has told the court that the discovery extension it requested “will necessarily extend beyond the current trial setting of December 7, 2026.” No order moving the trial has been entered.

Did the court order State Farm’s CEO to testify?

Yes. On September 1, 2026, Judge Amy Palumbo denied State Farm’s motion to quash the deposition of CEO Jon Farney and ordered it to take place within 30 days, limited to four hours.

When will more State Farm documents be unsealed?

Two dates to watch: September 21 (the Comanche County re-designation deadline, which State Farm has asked to extend) and September 28 (the Oklahoma County hearing on plaintiffs’ motion to de-designate). Subscribe to the archive’s alert list to be notified the day documents drop.

Where can I read the documents?

Free at The Hail Files, docs.alliedemergencyservices.com — every page OCR’d and searchable.

Allegations described in these filings are the claims of the parties, not findings of any court; State Farm disputes them, and nothing is decided until trial. Case numbers: Hursh v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., CJ-2025-2626, Oklahoma County District Court; West v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., CJ-2025-135, Comanche County District Court. Documents obtained from the Oklahoma State Courts Network.

How to cite this article: Allied Emergency Services, “State Farm Says It Needs 100 Lawyers and 179 Days to Show Oklahoma Its Roof Claims,” September 10, 2026, with primary sources at docs.alliedemergencyservices.com.

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