American International Group (AIG ) -- the massive insurance firm now notorious for its aggressive accounting -- is also known as a street fighter when it comes to paying claims. Insurance analyst J. Paul Newsome of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. (AGE ), who follows AIG, says the company has a reputation in the industry for playing hardball. "That's part of the reason companies buy insurance from AIG," he says. "They want to put up a vigorous defense if they think they're right."
How vigorous? Lawyers and advocates for abused children say that AIG and client Wyndham International Inc. (WBR ) have conducted an unusual and highly aggressive defense in a civil case involving the molestation of a 9-year-old girl by an employee of the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort & Spa in the Virgin Islands.
"SCORCHED EARTH" Bryan Hornby, director of the Kids Klub at the Wyndham resort, was promptly arrested and convicted in 2001 of unlawful sexual contact with the hand and sentenced to five years in a Virgin Islands prison. Denied parole in December, 2003, he is scheduled for release in 2006.
Despite Hornby's conviction, Wyndham and AIG have battled the girl's parents over damages for almost five years. They have sparred over psychological and medical exams, access to lists of other children entrusted to Hornby's care, and the use of private investigators to probe the parents' marketing business and the girl's friendships and behavior at school. "They have done everything they can to ruin these people. This has been scorched earth," says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, who has followed the case closely.
Gayter says Wyndham offered the family "an absolutely insulting pittance" to settle. A source familiar with the case says the offer was "somewhere north of $800,000." To Gayter, his family has paid a much higher price. "From the number of people they've deposed, they've effectively taken away [my daughter's] anonymity," says Gayter. His daughter feels that she can't open up to her counselors, Gayter adds, for fear that private confessions will end up in court records. "They're looking for dirt," he says. "We had our garbage stolen about a month before a deposition, and then when I was being deposed, there was this whole thing about why didn't we feed our kids properly and why did we eat so much take-away pizza?"