A Pasadena-based group of 10,000 wildfire survivors announced Wednesday, Sept. 9, that it has sued Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to block a private settlement with State Farm.

Every Fire Survivor's Network (EFSN) filed the lawsuit after waiting nearly three months for the California Department of Insurance (CDI) to act on its June 16 petition seeking party status in the state's enforcement case against State Farm General Insurance Company. The group says no neutral decisionmaker has been assigned to hear its request, even as the department and State Farm have moved into "early discovery" and, the group alleges, private settlement talks.

The lawsuit asks a court to order CDI to appoint a neutral decisionmaker and to bar both the department and State Farm from settling, dismissing or narrowing the enforcement case until the petition is resolved. EFSN says it is not asking the court to rule on whether State Farm broke the law.

"Survivors should not have to fight our own insurance regulator," Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor's Network, said in a statement reported by Pasadena Now.

The enforcement case at the center of the dispute, filed May 4, stems from a CDI examination of 220 State Farm claims. Examiners found 398 violations of state law in 114 of those claims. The group's attorney calculated an average of 3.49 violations per claim, according to the Pasadena Star-News. Violations included slow investigations, missed statutory deadlines, misclassified testing costs and inadequate communication. The department sought fines of $2 million to $4 million and asked to suspend State Farm's certificate of authority for up to a year.

State Farm has rejected the department's account. The insurer said it does not accept any suggestion that it "engaged in a general practice of mishandling" claims and said it would respond through the process. As of Aug. 31, State Farm said it had paid more than $6.2 billion in wildfire claims and closed about 78% of them.

EFSN says it holds firsthand accounts from more than 1,600 State Farm policyholders describing the same practices the department flagged. The group argues that evidence goes to the central dispute: whether the violations were isolated errors or a pattern of misconduct. State Farm insures more than 20% of Eaton and Palisades fire survivors, according to Chen.

Under state rules, the commissioner had 15 days to act on the petition. Three months later, no judge has been named. When EFSN filed in June, CDI said the proceeding was not brought under Proposition 103 and that the Administrative Procedures Act does not authorize intervention requests to the commissioner. The department said a hearing officer or administrative law judge would decide participation questions, but none had been assigned.

Commissioner Lara is term-limited and will leave office after the November 2026 election. No CDI response to the lawsuit has been made public.

State Farm faces a separate lawsuit from Los Angeles County, filed Aug. 31 in Los Angeles Superior Court. That case alleges unfair business practices, systematic underpayments and illegal suppression of smoke-damage claims, seeking restitution and civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation. The county also opened a separate investigation into Farmers Insurance on Sept. 9.

The Eaton fire killed 19 people, destroyed 9,400 homes and buildings and displaced 100,000 people, mostly in unincorporated Altadena. The Palisades fire killed 12 people and destroyed 6,845 structures. Chen said on Aug. 31 that two-thirds of impacted families remain displaced 19 months after the fires.

No court hearing date for the new lawsuit has been set.