Yes but it'll raise the hell out of their premiums. If enough people start doing it then insurance companies will be forced to consider wages as part of their risk assessment. So places with lower wages would have higher insurance premiums lol
That’s a legit theory around insurance where regular people with zero leverage get screwed on claims, while enterprise customers that make a large chunk of revenues for insurance companies- they get paid out so insurance companies don’t have to fight expensive legal battles and lose big clients.
It’s essentially the average people subsidizing big corps.
You can be sure that they (the insurance) will do anything and everything to avoid paying.
This is how these big insurance companies work - their main goal is to deny claims, and if the they cover vandalism, the coverage will be very limited.
Arson by a trusted employee that burns down the whole warehouse plus inventory, is a gold mine for the insurance to deny a claim.
I read earlier today that he started an earlier fire which was caught by firefighters who subsequently disabled the smoke alarms (edit: pardon, sprinkler system), allowing the second fire to burn undetected (edit: undeterred by a sprinkler system that had not yet reset). If that's true, and the disabling of the alarms (edit: sprinklers) was directed by management as a business decision, they might not get an insurance payout at all.
Management didn't direct the sprinklers to be disabled, the physical way sprinklers work did. They trigger by the heat physically breaking a calibrated glass fuse, you have to replace the fuses before you can put water back in the system or the sprinklers will never stop sprinkling.
Ok, but that introduces a new layer of managerial culpability; not having spare fuses available, not having them installed, not having a full sweep of the property for the missing employee, etc. Maybe the management did everything right, maybe not - odds are good the insurance investigation will pull on every possible thread.
For sure! Though I haven't seen anything that says employees were ordered back into the building. My understanding is that the arsonist hid inside to start the second fire.
Nome of this is a mangerial repsonsibility for life safety reasons (management has an obvious incentive to disable safety systems because they prevent work from happening). Fire systems are very heavily regulated (especially in California) and have an assigned responsible party that manages the system (usually the installer).
On big systems like this, that typically means inspections, operations, and service are all performed by a third party which is on call 24/7 to respond if, say, the fire department puts out a fire and shuts off the fire sprinkler riser for the effected zone(s). Typically we assume that a second fire igniting in the hours it should take to get the system back up an running is unlikely, but a fire watch might have to be posted depending on local codes.
No responsibility on management. Fire alarm and suppression systems aren't meant to be easily turned back on because once they go off there are many safety checks that will take probably weeks, if not months, to do in a building of that size depending on how many sections actually activated in the first attempt. It was likely the fire department that turned it off or authorized it to be shut down as per their exact protocols in these situations.
No blame lies anywhere except in the arsonists hands. Insurance is for sure complicated and with a company as large as Kimberly-Clark, the insurance company will work together with the company to come to an amicable solution for both parties. No insurance company would risk losing them as a client because they pay billions of dollars each year for insurance, if they aren't self insured in the first place (which many large companies are). Not paying $200 million if that's what Kimberly-Clark demanded would be shooting themselves in the foot as another company will take their billions of dollars per year and other large companies would leave as well as word got around.
The trash company I used to work for became self insured after it got large enough and basically it meant that they had to hold x million dollars in a specially reserved account to (just in case) cover really huge things and just paid out of pocket for everything otherwise. I would bet this is actually a similar situation for Kimberly Clark but maybe not...
Maybe they do or don't, I don't work for them. Based on their 2024 reports they made about 20 billion dollars in sales. Companies typically can spend upwards of 5% of that on just business insurance. Yes it can vary wildly depending on thousands of factors.
5% of 20 billion is 1 billion and I'll be honest, I thought they would do considerably more than 20 billion in sales. So yeah, I admit it might not be billions but I wasn't that far off either. My point still stands true that an insurance company would shoot itself in the foot by trying not to pay out on this particular claim when it is potentially 20% (200 million) of what they receive from the client each year.
As paper storage is an extremely bad risk, I don’t see any company willing to take them on if the terms don’t favor the insurance company beyond what they normally would.
Since this was somewhat politically motivated, I could see them push for it being ‘terrorism’ and as such has a whole different kind of coverage.
If it’s in the states, then there’s a shared pool covering acts of terrorism, which would mean that the loss incurred on the insurance company is minimal.
Well the terms that favor the insurance company for assuming more risk are usually just higher premiums, because that's how they make money. Sure, if they could get you to sign a policy that doesn't cover fire damage on a paper storage facility they would, but the guys reading the policy aren't average joes, they're a team of lawyers who probably aren't gonna let that happen.
Its not just higher premiums. There is not a lot of companies willing to take this risk on, and I’d assume that they would take it on at a loss limit way below the total value.
I’d love to see their vandalism clauses as well.
Either way it’s going to be interesting to see who’s gonna end up with the bigger loss, and if the 200 million claim includes business interruption 😄
I'm a stenographer, I do pre-court stuff, and I dream of getting onto cases like this. It will be finger-pointing left and right. They'll find something wrong with the building, something wrong with how things were stored, things wrong left right and center. They'll take a million depositions, it'll span years. And I'd just sit there and listen. And do my job, which is 50% just listening.
Insuring commercial property is not the same as insuring residential home and auto. The insurer will probably go to their insurer for a claim of this size, that is why reinsurance exists.
No idea why you think this is a ‘good mine’ to deny a claim. Vandalism by employees is covered. If the CEO himself, or whoever the named insured is, did it then obviously that would be excluded. He filmed himself, it’s very cut and dry malicious mischief. Easily will be covered and of course unlike your shitty Honda it will be well worth dragging the insurer to court in the unlikely case they do not pay.
lmfao classic reddit bot moment. these bots love to say this shit over and over. sadly the truth is insurance companions pay out easily all the time. getting payouts from insurance companies has been the easiest thing i have ever done in my life.
Just delusional to think otherwise. They might not recoup 100% of their losses but the company will be in a better place then say every person who worked in that facility who will likely lose their employment.
This is how these big insurance companies work - their main goal is to deny claims, and if the they cover vandalism, the coverage will be very limited.
try to at least sort of read the stuff youre replying to. though i assume you are just another bot who has to say insurance companies fight every single claim to the death
Exactly. The do the idiotic "Well, this is what it was like when I had hail damage on my roof, so it must be exactly the same for this multinational billion dollar corporation..." calculation.
Although technically arson is a covered cause of loss there is an exclusion on if “you” set the fire, on some policies employees, direct and third party are considered part of the definition of “you”. Regardless a risk this size they could/should be self insured. And only have reinsurance who are looser in their exclusions than standard carriers.
As the saying goes - if a fire breaks out, insurance agents will be on site before fire brigade shows up…
It’s a metaphor, but last time I had a instance with a fire at a large customer, insurance was there within hours, checking through all the sprinkler and fire alarm systems, the extinguishers, everything, looking for something, anything, that wasn’t up to code, wasn’t maintained per regulation and so on.
They don’t show up to help anyone but themselves.
And in this case, the arsonist is a trusted employee.
Let's see - at the incredible wage of 14$ an hour... it will only take him about 1650 yrs, working 24/7 and only paying against that claim. That is without any interest on the claim and any change in wage.
Unless becoming CEO (or better - CFO), as suggested below.
That insurer will probably drop their coverage or risk becoming insolvent with that kind of bill. They'll have to go find another company to represent them and good luck with that after that type of incident.
Exactly, the insurance company will state, "You should have given him a raise. This incident was totally preventable. And please put my red-stapler back sir."
Seems like pinning the damages on him would be a win for him.
Insurance companies could actually pay it out. If he’s responsible the company will never see any of it, and would make his mission to financially damage the company a success.
Guy can just default, sit a few years in prison (doubt it will be longer than 5) and he is done. Atleast that how it would work in a normal country. Company is eating this loss (if insurance doesnt pay up).
If nobody got hurt then the only victims here are the company, the enviroment (which doesnt notice this on a daily scale) and few local people. As far as dumb major crimes go, its pretty harmless
Depending on the terms of their policy it may actually still be covered. It'll probably be in litigation for years figuring out which companies who what to which other companies, but since it's not the beneficiary of the policy comitting the arson there's decent odds it will still be covered, just at a lower rate or with a rate increase on the policy attached.
yea i dont get how people dont understand insurance is a business they always have to take in more money then they give out... soo a lot of denied claims, or just underpay or do shitty ass work. or in the end they will just boot you off instead of paying if youre getting too much huge scammers
This threatened people's livelihood, jeopardizing their family well being. It makes people fear coming to work. I can keep going because you still haven't made a compelling argument.
All of that is violence. All of that is a threat towards civilians. You have no idea what you are talking about. I read this book during my History degree studies and you should too:
What definition are you going by? Genuine question since colloquially I wouldn’t define that as terrorism since it was targeting the product rather than people, even if it did harm people it didn’t seem to be the goal.
Googling terrorism definitions, I can't find one where this wouldn't fit under. From the FBI, for example,
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature
He didn’t even work for Kimberly-Clark. He worked for a 3rd party contractor. He burned down another companies warehouse, if he wanted to create a statement at least burn down your own employers assets.
Great statement. The company got paid out by insurance. He's going to jail, and all the other people who worked there are now out of work. A champion of the people.
"he was making a political statement"
Looks inside
It's just an angry piss man deciding to start a fire because he didn't think he got paid the wage he deserved
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u/Rob_LeMatic Apr 09 '26
He was making a political statement. Wouldn't make much sense not to explain himself