Two Trials, 800,000 Pages: State Farm’s Oklahoma Reckoning Now Starts November 2

TL;DR — The Oklahoma State Farm hail litigation now has two trial dates, five weeks apart. West v. State Farm (Comanche County, Judge Grant Sheperd) is set for November 2, 2026; Hursh v. State Farm (Oklahoma County, Judge Amy Palumbo) follows on December 7, with a pretrial conference November 19. Between now and then: a September 28 hearing on whether roughly 110,000 documents State Farm has marked confidential become public, a court order for 800,000 pages to be delivered to the West family’s lawyers, and a 30-day clock on the deposition of State Farm’s chief executive. Reporting published today by NonDoc, an Oklahoma nonprofit newsroom, adds one sentence from State Farm’s internal messages that explains why the document fight matters: “Each % point of difference is about 5K claims … at $15,769 avg severity or $78.8 million.” Every filing behind this article is free to read in The Hail Files.

Two trials, five weeks apart

For most of this year the calendar had one date on it. Hursh — the Tulsa couple whose denied hail claim became the lead case for more than 800 similar suits — was set for trial December 7 before Judge Palumbo, and everything else in the litigation was a step toward that courtroom. NonDoc’s September 15 report confirms a second date that had not been widely reported: West v. State Farm, the Comanche County case where the protective order was lifted in August, is set for trial November 2, before Judge Sheperd. That is the case whose lifted seal produced the 31 unsealed exhibits that started this series, and the case in which State Farm deposed the homeowners’ roofer on September 10 (Part 3).

The practical consequence is that the first jury to hear evidence about State Farm’s wind and hail claim practices will do so in Lawton, not Oklahoma City, and five weeks earlier than anyone planned around. Whatever is admitted, argued and reported in Comanche County in the first week of November becomes the backdrop for the Hursh trial and for the hundreds of cases queued behind it.

The document dispute: 800,000 pages and 110,000 designations

NonDoc’s headline says the dispute “crawls along,” and the docket agrees. In Comanche County, Judge Sheperd has ordered roughly 800,000 pages of material delivered to the Wests’ attorneys. In Oklahoma County, the plaintiffs’ motion to strike State Farm’s blanket confidentiality designations asks the court to de-designate about 110,000 documents — material already produced to the plaintiffs’ lawyers but marked confidential, which keeps it out of public filings and, in practice, out of the press. That motion is set for hearing on September 28 at 9 a.m.

State Farm’s side of the file has been about time. On August 31 it filed an emergency motion for extension of time; on September 3, a motion to extend the re-designation deadline in West, asking for roughly another month beyond the September 21 date on which material it cannot justify sealing would otherwise become public; and on September 10, a reply in support of a protective order consolidating depositions. The plaintiffs’ September 8 response is the other half of the argument the court will hear on the 28th.

Two more September 10 entries on the Hursh docket widen the circle. The plaintiffs moved to compel Accenture LLP — the global consulting firm — to comply with a subpoena duces tecum, a subpoena for documents. A sealed version was filed by court order; the public, redacted version (89 pages, with exhibits) is now in the archive, and it says what the plaintiffs are after. The subpoena asks for Accenture’s work on what the filing calls State Farm’s “Fire Model Enhancement – Wind/Hail,” its “Wind and Hail Fire Model Enhancement Team” and its “Hail Focus Initiative,” from January 1, 2018 to the present — reports, analyses, data, scopes of work and correspondence. The plaintiffs describe a May 20, 2020 Accenture status deck that, they say, placed the wind/hail roof work inside a five-state indemnity-reduction program (Florida, New York, California, Texas and Michigan) and defined success as fewer full roof replacements. Accenture’s objection, quoted in the motion, is that a request for documents “referring to full roof replacements as the biggest bucket of opportunity” is not limited to Oklahoma claims. These are the plaintiffs’ characterizations of documents the court has not yet ruled on; Accenture has not been found to have done anything improper, and State Farm disputes the plaintiffs’ account of the program. But for the first time a named outside consultant is inside the discovery fight, and a court has been asked to order it to hand over its files. The full motion, step by step, is Part 5: The Consultant.

Judge Palumbo’s view of the pace is on the record. At the September 1 hearing, denying State Farm’s motion to quash the deposition of CEO Jon Farney and ordering it to take place within 30 days, she said, per NonDoc: “I’m not interested in kicking this can down the road any longer.” Plaintiffs’ counsel Hannah Whitten, quoted in the same report, put the pattern more broadly: “It’s delays in claim handling, it’s delays in claim payouts, and it’s delays in responding to court orders. It’s pervasive.” State Farm has disputed the plaintiffs’ characterizations throughout and maintains that it evaluates each claim on its own facts under the policy.

The $78.8 million sentence

Among the internal State Farm communications described in NonDoc’s report is a message, produced in discovery, that reads: “Each % point of difference is about 5K claims … that is 5K claims at $15,769 avg severity or $78.8 million.” Read plainly, it is arithmetic: one percentage point of change in the rate at which a category of claims is paid or denied equals about five thousand claims; five thousand claims at an average payout of $15,769 equals $78.8 million. The plaintiffs say this is the language of a company managing its claim outcomes to a financial target — Whitten describes what she calls a “Fix Profit Task Force” that “implemented tactics across all lines of coverage … to intentionally reduce indemnity payments.” State Farm denies that any such program existed to deny valid claims.

The figure lines up with what the earlier unsealed material already showed. The 31 exhibits from West, analyzed in The Denial Enterprise, referenced a 2020 wind and hail initiative piloted in Dallas County that, according to the plaintiffs’ reading of the documents, was associated with roughly $15,000 in savings per denied claim and about $1.4 billion in reduced indemnity in its first year. A sentence that converts percentage points directly into dollars is what a jury will be asked to interpret — and it is the kind of sentence that stays sealed until a judge rules on 110,000 designations.

The human scale sits beside the corporate one. According to NonDoc, the Hurshes’ 2023 claim drew an offer of about $1,400 from State Farm against an estimated $22,000 in storm damage. In July 2026, the company distributed a roughly $5 billion dividend to its auto policyholders.

Why a contractor is still writing about this

Because the evidence in these cases is built out of contractors’ work. The West roofer’s deposition (Part 3) was about photographs, dates and an estimate. The State Farm witnesses whose depositions are set this week in Bloomington, Illinois — Wensley Herbert, Thomas Moss, Kathy Ress and Scott Welsh, named in State Farm’s September 10 motion to consolidate their depositions across cases, which the West plaintiffs oppose — will be asked about the same claims from the other side of the file. The CEO’s deposition, ordered on September 1 and due by about October 1, will be asked about the initiative that the field decisions allegedly served. At every level the question is the same one an adjuster and a contractor argue about on a driveway: what did the roof look like, when, and who wrote it down.

Our interest is the documentation standard. Allied is an Illinois-licensed restoration contractor, not a party to these cases and not a law firm; we do not adjust or negotiate claims, and coverage decisions belong to the homeowner and the insurer. What we do — inspect, photograph, measure and write it down in a form that survives a deposition two years later — is exactly what is being tested in Oklahoma, and it is why we publish the primary sources rather than summaries of them.

What to watch, in order

This week (Sept. 15–17): depositions of State Farm witnesses Herbert, Ress and Welsh in Bloomington, Illinois (Thomas Moss is the fourth named in State Farm’s consolidation motion). Sept. 21 (may move): the West re-designation deadline — State Farm has asked for roughly a month more; the ruling on that motion decides whether the next document wave lands now or in late October. Sept. 28, 9 a.m.: the Oklahoma County hearing on the 110,000 confidentiality designations. ~Oct. 1: the deadline for the CEO’s deposition under the September 1 order. Nov. 2: trial in West v. State Farm, Comanche County. Nov. 19: pretrial conference in Hursh. Dec. 7: trial in Hursh v. State Farm, Oklahoma County. The Trial Watch page carries every date with its source and is updated as filings post; court schedules change, and these have.

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Frequently asked questions

When are the State Farm trials in Oklahoma?

West v. State Farm (Comanche County, CJ-2025-135, Judge Grant Sheperd) is set for trial November 2, 2026. Hursh v. State Farm (Oklahoma County, CJ-2025-2626, Judge Amy Palumbo) is set for December 7, 2026, with a pretrial conference November 19. Dates are subject to change by the courts.

What is the September 28 hearing about?

The plaintiffs’ motion in Hursh to strike State Farm’s blanket confidentiality designations on roughly 110,000 produced documents. If granted, material now marked confidential could be filed publicly before trial.

What does “800,000 pages” refer to?

According to NonDoc’s September 15 report, Judge Sheperd in Comanche County has ordered approximately 800,000 pages of material delivered to the West family’s attorneys in discovery. Produced documents become public only when filed with the court or when a protective order is lifted.

Has State Farm’s CEO been deposed?

Not as of this writing. On September 1, Judge Palumbo denied State Farm’s motion to quash the deposition of CEO Jon Farney and ordered it to take place within 30 days. No transcript would be public unless filed.

Where can I read the documents?

In The Hail Files, the free public archive of the Oklahoma State Farm litigation, with every page OCR’d and searchable: docs.alliedemergencyservices.com.

All allegations described in this article are drawn from public court dockets and filings and from NonDoc’s September 15, 2026 reporting, and are attributed to the parties making them. State Farm denies the allegations and states that it evaluates each claim individually under the terms of the policy. Nothing is decided until a jury decides it.

About the author. Curt Testa is the founder and president of Allied Emergency Services, Inc., an Illinois-licensed storm damage restoration contractor serving Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. He has worked in the building trades since 1999, founded Allied in 2015, has been disclosed as a controlled expert witness under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 213(f)(3), has testified at trial in Illinois circuit court and has given sworn deposition testimony more than forty times. He publishes The Hail Files and provides forensic storm damage documentation and construction expert consultation for attorneys. Allied is not a law firm, insurance adjuster or public adjuster; this article is general information, not legal advice.