The One Route That Moved Money

Short answer: Of the routes in auto total loss valuation this research examined, the certified class action is the only one found moving real money to consumers. That is a statement about what this research located and re-read at the primary document, not a statement about every case ever filed. Three settlements against one insurer produced $121,748,947 and were stated to pay or make available between about $173 and about $533 a person. None of them established that anything was unlawful, and all three carry no-admission language. And in April 2026 an Ohio appellate court held that an insurer who demands the policy's own appraisal after the complaint is filed, gets a court order compelling it, and pays the resulting award, can end the whole class action.

By Anthony Braswell for Quorum Industries LLC, The Autobody Directory · Updated 2026-09-03 · How this was written, and what the machine may not do

How this page was produced: Researched, drafted and checked with AI assistance under human direction, and signed off by the named author. How this site is written

That last holding travels with four limits, and they are severe enough to belong here. First, this research located only three cases in which an insurer demanded appraisal after a class complaint was filed. Second, two of those three are Ohio, one of them being the decision just described. Third, in the third case a carrier ran the same play in the Second Circuit and lost. Fourth, that Second Circuit decision is a summary order which states on its face that it has no precedential effect. Three cases is not a practice. This is a move that has worked once on appeal, not an established mechanism, and this article does not claim otherwise anywhere below.

Transcription rule, stated once. Curly quotes and apostrophes are rendered as straight ASCII quotes. An em dash or en dash inside a quotation is rendered as a spaced double hyphen. No word, number or punctuation mark inside a quotation is added, removed or reordered. Every quotation and every figure below was re-fetched from its primary source and matched against it on 2026-09-02, and then re-fetched and matched again by a second and adversarial reader on 2026-09-03. Anything that would not re-verify was cut or corrected, and both rounds of correction are listed near the end.

The mechanism that gets these classes certified

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) requires that "the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy" (read on 2026-09-02).

In a total loss case the policy owes actual cash value, and actual cash value is a judgment about one used car. That is exactly why these classes usually fail. On 24 April 2026 the Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, put it this way in Clippinger v. State Farm Auto. Ins. Co., No. 24-5421, reviewing the Western District of Tennessee, No. 2:20-cv-02482:

"To determine whether State Farm paid 'actual cash value' for the 90,000 used vehicles in the class, a jury would have to consider unique evidence about each vehicle's value. And this individual valuation will 'predominate' over all other questions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3)."

"We thus reverse the district court's class-certification order and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion."

Worth recording how that case got there, because it cuts against reading the federal courts as uniformly hostile. A divided panel of the same court had affirmed certification. The en banc court vacated the panel decision, heard argument on 18 March 2026, and reversed (read on 2026-09-03). Judges on one federal court of appeals disagreed with each other about this theory before the majority closed it.

The classes that survived did not ask any court to value a car. They asked the court to re-run the insurer's own vendor valuation with one challenged line deleted, and to treat the difference as the damage. Because that line is a fixed, recorded, per-claim item, the difference is arithmetic rather than judgment.

Volino v. Progressive Casualty Ins. Co., Nos. 21 Civ. 6243 (LGS) and 22 Civ. 1714 (LGS), S.D.N.Y., Schofield J., 16 March 2023:

"Contrary to Progressive's argument, Progressive's own valuation data, with and without the PSA, constitutes class-wide proof of actual cash value, which can be compared with the amount Plaintiffs were paid to determine liability and damages."

"If the factfinder accepts Plaintiffs' evidence on the state of the market, then simply recalculating the valuation using Progressive's methodology without the PSA will accurately value each class member's vehicle."

"Because Plaintiffs take the position that the PSA should not exist at all, a damages model based on simply removing the PSA and re-running the valuations matches Plaintiffs' liability theory."

That last sentence is the answer to Comcast v. Behrend, which the same order quotes for the rule that "[a] model purporting to serve as evidence of damages in this class action must measure only those damages attributable to [plaintiffs' liability] theory." The fit between the damages model and the liability theory is exact because they are the same operation.

Reynolds v. Progressive Direct Ins. Co., No. 5:22-cv-503-LCB, N.D. Ala. (Northeastern Div.), Burke J., 3 April 2024, 40 pages, "DONE and ORDERED this April 3, 2024":

"Plaintiffs' proposed method of calculating damages thus relies on an already extant, mechanical formula, making class treatment appropriate."

"'Progressive can hardly complain that the methodology [that Reynolds and Penn] would impose on them is the one Progressive chose and developed.'"

And the sentence that distinguishes the Fifth Circuit authority that closed this theory elsewhere:

"Sampson is inapposite. Reynolds's and Penn's contention is not that ACV should be determined by NADA, KBB, or any other 'generally recognized used motor vehicle industry source,' see id., but rather that it should be determined by 'market value.'"

Brown v. Progressive Mountain Ins. Co. and Bost v. Progressive Premier Ins. Co. of Illinois, Civil Action File No. 3:21-cv-175-TCB, N.D. Ga. (Newnan Div.), Batten C.J., 3 August 2023:

"That is, by essentially rerunning Defendant's calculation of actual cash value but with a lawful base value, Plaintiffs' damages theory only pays damages resulting from the allegedly unlawful base value."

The same order also records the plaintiffs' expert, Jason Merritt, as opining that "removing the PSA from Mitchell reports arrives at a sound individualized ACV appraisal." That sentence is the expert's opinion as reproduced by the court, not a finding of the court, and it is quoted here as such (attribution corrected on 2026-09-03).

Note that expert sentence anyway, because it is the theory in miniature. The model is an argument that the insurer has already performed the individual appraisal, once per claim, and that only one line of it is in dispute.

That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the class definitions read the way they do. Here is the Volino breach of contract class, with the court's own brackets, because a reader has to be able to match themselves against it:

"All persons who made a first-party claim (which was assigned a Progressive Company Code [that corresponds to one of the Defendants]) on a policy of insurance issued by any Progressive Group entity to a New York resident who, from July 28, 2015 through the date an order granting class certification is entered, received compensation for the total loss of a covered vehicle, where that compensation was based on an Instant Report prepared by [non-party Mitchell International, Inc. ("Mitchell")] and the actual cash value was decreased based upon Projected Sold Adjustments to the comparable vehicles used to determine actual cash value."

How many of these there are, and where that number comes from

Eight trial level certifications in first-party auto physical damage are recorded across the two research passes behind this article. Six were re-read at a primary court document on 2026-09-02, all six were re-read again on 2026-09-03, and six is the number used here: Volino (S.D.N.Y.), Brown and Bost (N.D. Ga.), Reynolds (N.D. Ala.), Davenport (Cuyahoga County Common Pleas, affirmed on appeal), Stewart (Cuyahoga County Common Pleas, reversed on appeal) and Clippinger (W.D. Tenn., reversed en banc). Five courts, six certifications.

Two further certifications appear in the research file, in the Southern District of Texas and the Middle District of Florida. Neither was re-fetched in either pass, so neither is counted in the six. We would rather publish a number we re-read today than a larger number we inherited. We do not claim that six is the number of certifications this theory has produced. Six is what was re-read at a primary court document, two more sit unverified in our own file, and no case we did not open is counted anywhere on this page.

The certification rate in this theory is not low. What closed it was appellate review, and the three cases that produced money never reached it.

What the money actually was

Every figure in this section was read on 2026-09-02 at the court-appointed settlement administrator's own site or in the court's own order, and re-read on 2026-09-03. Every one of these settlements resolves nothing about the facts, and the parties' own documents say so.

Volino, New York

The fund is "$48,000,000". The court-approved notice states that "approximately $31,200,000 of which will be distributed to Settlement Class Members" and that "each Settlement Class Member who does not opt out will receive a check for, on average, $335". The motion for final approval states: "From this data, Class Counsel and the Settlement Administrator determined there are 82,276 Settlement Class Members." Gross, before fees and costs, the same motion states "a gross recovery of approximately $516, on average, per claim", and puts that at "approximately 69% of the compensatory damages alleged by Plaintiffs under the damages model they were prepared to present at trial".

Nobody had to claim anything. The motion for final approval, not the notice, is where that is said: "There is no claims process. Instead, each Settlement Class Member who does not opt out will automatically receive a pro rata distribution tailored to the value of their loss vehicle and calculated consistent with Plaintiffs' damages model."

Final approval issued on 6 March 2025 over Schofield J.'s signature. The order records that "No objections were submitted to the Settlement Administrator or filed in this matter, and any objections to the Settlement Agreement are overruled and denied in all respects", and that "only five Settlement Class Members have opted out." Five. An earlier research pass recorded fourteen; the order says five, and the order is what is published.

Counsel requested "a fee award of one-third of the cash settlement" on a stated lodestar of "$5,485,782.25", which the petition says "equates to a multiplier of 2.85 (if the 150 hours estimated to conclude this litigation is credited) to 2.92 (if no such time is credited)", plus "reimbursement of litigation costs and expenses of $342,766.26" and service awards of "$10,000" each to seven named plaintiffs. The petition names the fee figure itself: "$16,000,000.00 in attorneys' fees (one third of the Settlement Fund)" (read on 2026-09-03). No arithmetic of ours is needed to establish it.

Brown and Bost, Georgia

The fee brief describes the fund as "$43,000,000.00"; the long form notice puts the same fund as "$43,000,000". The 2025 long form notice states "approximately $28,030,667.00 of which will be distributed to Settlement Class Members" and an average payment of "on average, $173.00". As in Volino, the default is automatic: "If you wish to receive money from the Settlement, you do not need to do anything." The final fairness hearing was set for "May 15, 2025, at 11:00 a.m."

Counsel sought "a fee award of one-third of the cash settlement" on a stated "total lodestar of $4,611,220.30", which the brief says "would equate to a multiplier of approximately 3.11", plus "reimbursement of litigation costs and expenses of $303,275.24" and "Service Awards of $10,000.00 per Named Plaintiffs". The brief names the figure directly: "$14,333,333.33 in attorneys' fees (one-third of the Settlement Fund)" (read on 2026-09-03). Counsel's own characterisation of the deal, which is advocacy in a fee brief and not a finding by any court, is that the fund "constitutes an incredible 49% of the best-case compensatory damages that could have been secured at trial".

We are not printing a number of Brown class members. An earlier research pass carried 151,485 people identified for notice. The long form notice states no class size, and the fee brief states none either, describing the class only as "hundreds of thousands". The figure did not re-verify in either pass, so it is cut.

Reynolds, Alabama

Reynolds is different in a way that matters more than its size. The settlement FAQ states: "The Total PSA Impact Amount that is available to be claimed by the Settlement Classes is estimated to be $30,748,947." and "The estimated average recovery is $533." But the money is claims-made: "Class Counsel will be seeking attorneys' fees of no more than $6,918,513.08, which is 22.5% of the total amount of funds made available to the Settlement Classes, subject to approval by the Court."

Those first two Reynolds figures also appear in our companion article on what each route to a decision-maker costs, read from the same FAQ and printed there in the same words. They are one finding read once, not two independent discoveries, and a reader who meets them twice should read them as the same sentence of the same document.

Check that against itself. 22.5 percent of $30,748,947 is $6,918,513.08, to the cent. So counsel's percentage is measured against the notional fund, while every class member gets only what they filed a form for by "October 15, 2025". In Volino and Brown the money goes out automatically and nobody has to do anything. In Reynolds, doing nothing means getting nothing, and the fee is calculated on the money nobody claimed as well as the money somebody did.

The totals, and the ratio that is not on any notice

We are not saying that $121,748,947 reached consumers. Two of those figures are settlement funds and the third is an amount stated to be available to be claimed, and no distribution report, claims rate or uncashed cheque figure was obtained for any of the three.

Two ratios, computed here from the quoted figures because they appear on no notice. In Volino the fee requested is 51.3 percent of the money going to the class ($16,000,000 against approximately $31,200,000). In Brown it is 51.1 percent ($14,333,333.33 against approximately $28,030,667). Both are amounts requested. Neither award is established, so both true ratios are lower by an unknown amount.

One arithmetic check does not reconcile, and we publish it as a failure. $31,200,000 divided by 82,276 members is $379.21, but the notice states the average as $335. The gap is presumably notice and administration cost, but no document read on 2026-09-02 or 2026-09-03 says so, so no composite figure is published and no explanation is asserted here.

Why $173 is not, on this record, evidence of a bad settlement

This is the strongest thing that can be said against the numbers above, and it deserves to sit with them.

A per-person figure of $173, or $335, or $533 looks small next to a nine-figure fund, and the temptation is to read it as consumers being sold out. On this record that reading is not available. The harm each of these cases alleged was one line item deleted from one vendor valuation of one used car. That is a small number by construction. Nobody alleged the whole payment was wrong, only that one adjustment inside it was. A small per-person recovery is what a small per-person claim looks like when it is actually paid.

The settling parties' own documents put figures on how much of the alleged harm was recovered, and those figures are high, not low. In Volino the gross average of about $516 a claim is stated by class counsel to be "approximately 69% of the compensatory damages alleged by Plaintiffs under the damages model they were prepared to present at trial". In Brown the fund is stated to be "49% of the best-case compensatory damages that could have been secured at trial". Both statements are advocacy in fee papers rather than findings by a court, and neither was tested by anyone. But they are the only measurements on this record of settlement value against claim value, and they say these consumers recovered roughly half to roughly two thirds of what their own lawyers thought the claims were worth at trial, without trial risk and without having to do anything.

The fee ratios above are a real feature of this record and are printed as such. They are not, by themselves, evidence that the class did badly.

Nothing was admitted, and the notices do not say so

The Volino final approval order is explicit:

"Neither the Settlement Agreement, the Settlement contained therein, the negotiation nor any proceeding or document executed pursuant to or in furtherance thereof, (i) is or shall be construed as, an admission of, or evidence of, the truth of any allegation or of any liability or the validity of any claim or defense, in whole or in part, on the part of any party in any respect, or (ii) is or shall be admissible in any action or proceeding for any reason, other than an action or proceeding to enforce the terms of the Settlement or this Order."

The Reynolds settlement agreement, obtained and read at first hand on 2026-09-03, is in the same terms:

"WHEREAS, Defendants deny and continue to deny all material allegations in the Action and maintain they complied with the automobile insurance policies and all applicable laws."

"This Agreement shall not be construed as an admission or concession of the truth of any of the allegations in the Action, or of any liability, fault, or wrongdoing of any kind."

An earlier pass carried that first sentence at one remove and in a garbled form. It is now quoted from the agreement itself, and the earlier version is corrected in the log below.

And a measured absence that is worth more than either quotation. The Volino notice, the Brown long form notice and the Reynolds FAQ were each searched on 2026-09-02, and searched again on 2026-09-03, for a sentence telling class members the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing. None of the three contains one. Each search was run with a positive control that returned and a nonsense control string that did not, so the search worked and the sentence is genuinely absent. The no-admission language sits in the final approval order and the settlement agreement, documents a class member has to go and find. A consumer who cashes a $335 cheque has been paid to end a question, not answered.

The move that stops it, and how far it actually reaches

Stewart v. Farmers Ins. of Columbus, Inc., 2026-Ohio-1451, Ohio Eighth Appellate District No. 115049, released and journalized 23 April 2026, Keough J. writing, S.C. Gallagher P.J. and Calabrese J. concurring, from Cuyahoga County Common Pleas No. CV-23-981091. Judgment: "REVERSED AND REMANDED".

The sequence, in the court's own sentence:

"After the complaint was filed and in accordance with the policy, Farmers made an appraisal demand, which resulted in Farmers formally filing a motion to compel appraisal."

The rule:

"Where the named plaintiff's individual claim becomes moot before class certification, dismissal of the entire action, including the class claims, is required."

The application:

"Because the appraisal award was binding on both parties after being invoked and Farmers' tendering payment to Stewart, representing the actual cash value for Stewart's vehicle, there was no longer a live controversy between the parties."

Read that carefully, because the detail is the whole point. The named plaintiff never accepted anything. The opinion records that "Stewart declined to cash the check and continued the litigation without amending the complaint" and that "Stewart did not move to set aside the appraisal award." The mootness holding rests on the award being binding and the payment being tendered, not on the plaintiff taking anything. That is what separates this from an ordinary attempt to buy off a class representative, and the court said so:

"But unlike Hoban and Wilson, the payment Farmers tendered was not issued as a means of a 'settlement offer' or a unilateral attempt to circumvent class claims."

The case for the insurer, which is stronger than it first looks

Before going further it is worth stating the defence of this ruling at its full strength, because it is a good defence and a reader who skips it will misread everything below.

The appraisal clause is a bargained term of the policy, and it runs both ways. It is not a procedural trick the insurer invented for litigation. It is a clause the insured bought, and it belongs to the insured as much as to the carrier. The provision quoted in Stewart is mutual on its face:

"[Policy holder] or [Farmers] may demand appraisal of the loss. Each will appoint and pay a competent and disinterested appraiser and will equally share other appraisal expenses. The appraisers, or a judge of a court having jurisdiction, will select an umpire to decide any differences. Each appraiser will state separately the actual cash value and the amount of loss. An award in writing by any two appraisers will determine the amount payable, which shall be binding on the parties."

Either side may demand it. A policyholder who thinks the carrier's number is too low can invoke exactly the same clause, without a lawyer and without a class. The Second Circuit, in the very decision that went against the carrier, records that "New York public policy favors an appraisal proceeding over a trial on damages, and under New York law, waiver of the right to an appraisal is not lightly inferred."

Note the second sentence of that clause, though, because it is the sentence with a price in it. Each side appoints and pays its own appraiser and the two share the umpire and the other expenses. This article prints no dollar figure for that, because it read no document that puts one on this policy. Our companion article on what each route to a decision-maker costs does price the appraisal route, against the amounts consumers actually recover, and a reader deciding whether to invoke the clause should read the price there before deciding.

A court compelling appraisal is enforcing the contract, not doing the carrier a favour. Farmers did not end this case by writing a cheque of its own choosing. It asked a court to enforce a term of the policy, the court agreed the term applied, two independent appraisers valued the car, and the award bound both sides. A judge who orders parties to do what their contract says is performing the ordinary work of contract law.

And on these facts the appraisal moved money toward the consumer. The court's own figures, re-read at the court's PDF on 2026-09-03, are these:

"In January 2023, Farmers paid Stewart $9,795, which represented the adjusted vehicle value of $10,295 plus fees, but minus Stewart's $500 deductible."

"the two appraisers jointly issued an award finding the "actual cash value" for Stewart's vehicle to be $11,564.08, which was higher than the amount Farmers originally paid Stewart."

"Farmers issued a check payable to Stewart for $1,393.29, representing the difference between the original amount and the appraisal award."

Those figures do not reconcile, and we print the failure. The award of $11,564.08 less the adjusted vehicle value of $10,295 is $1,269.08. The award less the $9,795 actually paid is $1,769.08. Neither is the $1,393.29 the court says was the difference between the original amount and the appraisal award, and the opinion does not say which figure it is treating as the original amount or how the cheque was calculated. So what this record establishes is the direction and not the size: the appraisal award was higher than what Farmers had first paid, the court says so in terms, and Farmers issued a further cheque. We state no percentage increase, because every percentage available here depends on choosing which of the court's own figures to disbelieve, and we have no basis for choosing. Whatever else the appraisal clause did to the class claim, it did not shortchange the named plaintiff on his own car.

The criticism that follows is a criticism of timing and of consequence, not of the clause.

What the court itself said about how far this reaches

The court bounded its own ruling, in sentences that travel with any account of this case:

"We find that this is not the exceptional case where the issues evade review."

"Moreover, we recognize that the underlying issue -- whether an insurer applying line-item adjustments when calculating payment for total loss under an automobile insurance policy -- is currently pending in the Ohio Supreme Court."

"The circumstances surrounding the case before us is premised on timing, procedural maneuvers, and rulings that could be challenged in subsequent proceedings."

"Accordingly, under different circumstances, individual and class claims on this issue may survive the mootness doctrine."

The last of those is the court telling you not to read it as broadly as the insurance defence press has read it.

The controlled comparison

The same intermediate appellate court, the Ohio Eighth District, took the opposite view of a materially similar complaint nine months earlier.

Both string searches were run on 2026-09-02 and again on 2026-09-03 against the two opinions on the Ohio judiciary's own server. In Davenport, "Projected Sold Adjustment", "predominate", "abuse of discretion", "Hicks" and "appraisal" all returned, while "moot", "mootness" and a nonsense control string all returned nothing. In Stewart, "moot", "appraisal", "Urbassik" and "Hoban" all returned and the same nonsense control did not. The instrument can find strings in these documents and can also fail to find one, so the empty cells above record real absences. An earlier pass asserted a precise count of how many times the word "appraisal" occurs in Davenport; the count did not reproduce consistently on 2026-09-03 and has been cut, while the substance it supported did reproduce and stands.

The strongest sentence available on this record is this one. The same Ohio appellate district affirmed one total loss class action in July 2025 and killed another in April 2026, and the difference visible on the face of the two opinions is that in the second one the insurer demanded the policy's own appraisal after the complaint was filed, paid the award, and never had to argue about whether the deduction was lawful.

Now the limits, which travel with that sentence everywhere it goes. The panels were different judges of the same district. The insurers, the vendors and the adjustments are not identical. Two cases cannot isolate a variable. This is a close comparison, not a laboratory one, and nothing here establishes that the appraisal demand caused the different outcome rather than merely accompanying it.

What Stewart did not decide

Two things, and both matter more than they look.

First, waiver was never argued. The word "waiver", and every word beginning "waiv", does not appear anywhere in the Stewart opinion. That absence was tested on 2026-09-03 with a controlled instrument: on the same document and in the same pass, "moot", "appraisal", "Urbassik" and "Hoban" all returned and a nonsense control string did not, so the instrument was capable of both finding and failing to find. Whether an insurer that waits until a class complaint is filed and then demands appraisal has waived the right by its own delay is the obvious answer to this move, and it is not in this record. That is the argument not being made. It is not the court rejecting it, and nothing here should be read as though the court considered and refused it.

Second, Campbell-Ewald does not appear either. The strings "Campbell-Ewald", "Gomez" and "Chen v. Allstate" were each searched in the Stewart opinion on 2026-09-03, under the same controls, and none returned. Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. 153 (2016), Ginsburg J., 20 January 2016, holds, adopting a formulation from Justice Kagan's dissent in Genesis HealthCare, that "An unaccepted settlement offer -- like any unaccepted contract offer -- is a legal nullity, with no operative effect", and then expressly reserves the question Stewart is closest to:

"That ruling suffices to decide this case. We need not, and do not, now decide whether the result would be different if a defendant deposits the full amount of the plaintiff's individual claim in an account payable to the plaintiff, and the court then enters judgment for the plaintiff in that amount. That question is appropriately reserved for a case in which it is not hypothetical."

Stewart is not squarely inside that reservation, because no judgment was entered for the plaintiff in the amount. The Ninth Circuit, on facts nearer the reservation, held in Chen v. Allstate Insurance Company (Silverman, Fisher and Tallman, 12 April 2016) that "In sum, Pacleb's individual claims are not now moot, because he has not actually received all of the relief to which he is entitled on those claims." None of that was briefed in Stewart, and the Ohio court is applying Ohio Civ.R. 23 and Ohio mootness doctrine rather than Article III. We are not going to write that these authorities were rejected, because they were not raised.

It is a move, not yet a mechanism

Three cases were located in which an insurer demanded appraisal after a class complaint was filed. Two are Ohio: Stewart itself, and Urbassik v. Am. Family Mut. Ins. Co., 657 F.Supp.3d 1015 (N.D. Ohio 2023), which is the only authority Stewart relied on for the move and which is carried here entirely at one remove, through the Eighth District's own sentence:

"In support, Farmers relies on a similar case in which a federal court, applying Ohio law, held that performance of contractual appraisal provisions mooted the underlying claims -- Urbassik v. Am. Family Mut. Ins. Co., 657 F.Supp.3d 1015 (N.D. Ohio 2023)."

Note that these two Ohio cases are not from the same court. Stewart is a state intermediate appellate decision of the Eighth District; Urbassik is a federal district court decision from the Northern District of Ohio. The Urbassik opinion itself was not obtained, in either pass, so no quotation from it appears anywhere in this article.

The third case is the one that cuts the other way. In Milligan v. GEICO Gen. Ins. Co. and See v. Government Employees Insurance Company, Nos. 22-2950 and 23-742, Second Circuit, Jacobs, Sullivan and Nardini JJ., 13 March 2025, GEICO ran the identical play and lost. That decision is a summary order which states on its face that "RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT", and that limitation belongs in the same sentence as the case. The facts are the Stewart move exactly:

"Within sixty days of each plaintiff's initiation of (or joining in) a lawsuit, GEICO communicated a demand for appraisal to that plaintiff's counsel, invoking the Appraisal Provision."

"As a result, GEICO maintains that its demands for appraisals -- made within sixty days of receiving notice of the suits -- were timely under the Appraisal Provision."

The court read the clause, which runs the window from proof of loss:

"If we and the insured do not agree on the amount of loss, either may, within 60 days after proof of loss is filed, demand an appraisal of the loss."

"And because GEICO's demand for appraisal in each case undisputedly came more than sixty days after payment of loss, we conclude that such demands were untimely."

The court affirmed the orders denying GEICO's requests to compel appraisal. Note that this clause too says "either may", which is the mutuality point again: the sixty day window belongs to the policyholder as well.

So the practical finding is narrow and it is a drafting question rather than a doctrinal one. On the two appellate records located, whether an insurer can use appraisal to end a class action turns substantially on whether the policy or the state put a clock on the demand. The Farmers policy as quoted in Stewart contains no demand deadline, and no deadline language returned when the opinion was searched on 2026-09-03 under the controls described above. The GEICO policy quoted in Milligan runs sixty days from proof of loss. That difference is invisible to any consumer reading their own policy for a remedy.

Three cases is not a practice. Two Ohio decisions from two different courts, and one non-precedential Second Circuit summary order, do not make this a nationwide playbook, and this article does not claim they do. The insurance defence press has described the Stewart ruling to insurers as reinforcing the appraisal clause as a litigation tool, which tells you the move is being noticed. It does not tell you it is being used, and we did not find evidence that it is. We are not claiming that insurers are now demanding appraisal to end class actions. Three cases were located across two states and one federal circuit, and nothing we read shows the move spreading.

The case that has not been decided

The valuation question underneath all of this is under submission in the Supreme Court of Ohio right now.

Davenport v. Progressive Direct Ins., 2025-Ohio-2449, Eighth Appellate District No. 114306, released 10 July 2025, Ryan J. with Sheehan P.J. and E.T. Gallagher J., from Cuyahoga C.P. No. CV-22-961647. Judgment: "AFFIRMED". The reasoning is the mechanism in a sentence:

"Similar to Hicks, the plaintiffs in the instant case challenge a one-line item deduction -- the PSAs -- and that line item predominates over individual questions."

"On this record, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by finding that plaintiffs' contention about the PSA deduction as a means of valuing their claims raises common issues that predominate this litigation."

The Hicks relied on is Hicks v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 965 F.3d 452 (6th Cir. 2020). The certified class tracks the federal ones almost word for word: Ohio residents, claims submitted from 6 April 2014, total loss determined, and payment "based its claim payment on an Instant Report from Mitchell where a Projected Sold Adjustment was applied to at least one comparable vehicle."

The Supreme Court of Ohio accepted the appeal. Its case announcements for 12 November 2025 carry the entry under the heading "APPEALS ACCEPTED FOR REVIEW": "2025-1102. Davenport v. Progressive Direct Ins. Co. Cuyahoga App. No. 114306, 2025-Ohio-2449. Brunner, J., dissents." The Court's own oral argument calendar lists "Mon Cheri Davenport, et al. v. Progressive Direct Insurance Company, et al. - Cuyahoga" on Wednesday 10 June 2026, now shown among previous arguments. The Ohio judiciary's own news service frames the issue as: "Can vehicle owners form a class to file a lawsuit challenging a single adjustment used by their insurers when determining the value of the total loss of their vehicles?" It records that Progressive "argues that determining ACV is an individualized process, noting the various factors for each totaled vehicle, including mileage, condition before the accidents, and customizations", and that "Davenport and the other vehicle owners filed their merit brief under seal, and their arguments aren't publicly available."

As of 2026-09-03 it has not been decided. That was re-checked today from three instruments that would carry a decision if there were one. First, the Supreme Court of Ohio's daily case announcement feed, read on 2026-09-03, runs through 2 September 2026 and contains no entry for Davenport, for Progressive, or for case No. 2025-1102. That feed was positively controlled on the same day: it does carry merit decisions of the Court, including insurance merit decisions such as Eddy v. Farmers Property Cas. Ins. Co., so it is an instrument that would show a Davenport decision if one existed. Second, the Court's own daily case announcements and opinions archive, read on 2026-09-03, likewise runs through 2 September 2026 and carries no Davenport entry. Third, a source with an adverse interest agrees: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which filed a coalition amicus brief on 6 February 2026 "urging the Ohio Supreme Court to reverse certification of actual-cash-value insurance class action because individual valuation issues predominate", listed the case status as "Pending" when read on 2026-09-03.

One limit on that check, stated plainly. The Court's own electronic docket for case No. 2025-1102 could not be read: the clerk's docket interface serves a JavaScript shell with no case content to this article's fetcher. So the statement above rests on the announcements feed, the announcements archive and the Chamber page, all current to 2 September 2026. A decision announced on 3 September 2026 would not yet appear in any of them.

Why it matters more than anything else here. Every federal circuit that has closed this theory closed it under Rule 23(b)(3), and Clippinger is the most recent. State courts are not bound by Rule 23, and Ohio's Civ.R. 23(B)(3) produced the opposite answer at the intermediate level. If the Supreme Court of Ohio affirms, the theory has a state court life after the federal circuits closed it. If it reverses, the three settlements are where this record stops.

What a person can actually do

Start from the honest part. A class action is a route no individual can choose to take. Counsel pick the insurer, the state, the theory and the year, and a consumer's only participation is receiving a letter, which only happens if their own claim file contains the specific line item that defines the class.

One. Keep the valuation report, not just the cheque. Every class definition read on 2026-09-02 and re-read on 2026-09-03 turns on the same facts: which company issued the policy, which state the insured lived in, when the claim was submitted, that the vehicle was determined a total loss, and that the vendor report applied the specific adjustment to at least one comparable vehicle. The document that proves it is the Mitchell Instant Report or the CCC valuation report the adjuster used. It is not the settlement cheque.

Two. The notice is the only official communication, and the rule says what it must contain. Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(c)(2)(B) requires that notice "clearly and concisely state in plain, easily understood language" seven things: "(i) the nature of the action; (ii) the definition of the class certified; (iii) the class claims, issues, or defenses; (iv) that a class member may enter an appearance through an attorney if the member so desires; (v) that the court will exclude from the class any member who requests exclusion; (vi) the time and manner for requesting exclusion; and (vii) the binding effect of a class judgment on members under Rule 23(c)(3)." In practice it arrives as a postcard or an email naming a website. A notice that looks like junk mail is, in this field, the only official document a class member will ever receive about their own case.

Three. Find out which kind of settlement it is, because the default is not the same. Volino and Brown pay automatically. Reynolds does not. Its FAQ puts it in the negative: "You will not receive a Settlement Payment if you do not submit a Claim Form." The claim form deadline in Reynolds was 15 October 2025. In a claims-made settlement, doing nothing means getting nothing, and counsel's percentage is calculated on the money nobody claimed as well as the money somebody did.

Four. Understand what the payment is not. It is not a finding. It is not evidence. The order and the settlement agreement say so in terms, and the notice does not say it at all.

Five, and this is the part of Stewart that reaches an individual. If an insurer demands the policy's appraisal and pays the resulting award, an Ohio appellate court has held that the underlying valuation claim is over, including the class claim of the person it was paid to, relying on one earlier federal decision in Ohio that this article could not read at first hand. Three things follow, and they pull in different directions. The appraisal itself may be worth having: in Stewart the appraisers' award was higher than the amount Farmers had first paid, the court says so, and Farmers paid more money afterwards, and the clause is one the policyholder can invoke too. The appraisal is not free: the Farmers clause quoted above makes each side appoint and pay its own appraiser and share the umpire and the other expenses, this article puts no figure on that, and our companion article on what each route to a decision-maker costs prices the appraisal route against the amounts consumers actually recover. And a consumer offered an appraisal after they have filed or joined a case should understand that the appraisal may be the end of the case as well as the end of the dispute, and that whether it is depends on things they cannot see: the demand deadline in their own policy, and which state they are in.

What we could not verify, and what is not a wall

Three different kinds of failure are recorded here, and they are not the same kind of thing.

A wall, recorded as one. On 2026-09-03 the CourtListener docket for Reynolds v. Progressive Direct, No. 5:22-cv-00503, refused retrieval with a robots.txt disallow. That is a site declining to be read by an automated fetcher. It is a wall, it is recorded as a wall, and nothing is inferred from it. No document listed under Sources was behind a wall in either pass: no 403, no CAPTCHA, no paywall and no JavaScript shell was encountered at any of them.

Instrument failures, not walls. Three public court documents resolve but return no usable text.

A bad guess, recorded as one. A case announcements URL for 2026 was constructed by pattern, and returned 404 on 2026-09-03. That is our error, not a missing document, and nothing is inferred from it.

An environment restriction, which is also not a wall. Direct command-line retrieval in this session is refused by the session's own egress proxy, which answered 403 to CONNECT for www.supremecourt.ohio.gov:443 on 2026-09-02 and again on 2026-09-03. That is this workstation's policy, not the court's, and it was confirmed on 2026-09-03 by reading the proxy's own failure log. The same host served every document requested through the fetch tool. We record it here so nobody later reads it as the Ohio judiciary blocking anything, because it is not.

What is therefore not established, and is not estimated.

• How the Stewart cheque of $1,393.29 was arrived at. The opinion, re-read at the court's own PDF on 2026-09-03, gives an adjusted vehicle value of $10,295, an initial payment of $9,795 described as that value plus fees minus a $500 deductible, an appraisal award of $11,564.08, and a cheque of $1,393.29 described as "the difference between the original amount and the appraisal award." The award less the adjusted value is $1,269.08 and the award less the initial payment is $1,769.08. No subtraction available on the court's own figures produces $1,393.29, and the opinion does not identify the original amount or explain the calculation. We reproduce the court's figures as the court states them and compose no further number from them, which is the posture our companion article on route costs takes on the same opinion.
• The attorneys' fees actually awarded in Volino. The order exists and is titled "Order Granting in Part Attorney Fees, Service Awards, Expenses", so the request was cut. By how much is unknown. We refuse to estimate it, and every Volino fee figure in this article is labelled as requested rather than awarded.
• The attorneys' fees actually awarded in Brown, and everything else in that final approval order.
• Whether Reynolds received final approval. The FAQ read on 2026-09-03 states that a final approval hearing was set for "September 15, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. EST". The settlement site's documents page, read the same day, lists no final approval order or judgment and carries nothing dated after its own "Updated: 10/17/2025" stamp. The court docket that would settle it was behind the robots wall recorded above. Final approval is not established either way, and we will not infer it from the passage of time or from a hearing having been scheduled.
• What was actually paid, in any of the three settlements. No distribution report, claims rate or uncashed cheque figure was obtained for any of them. Reynolds is claims-made, so the sum available to be claimed is not the sum paid, and this article never calls it one.
• What an appraisal under a policy like the Farmers clause costs. No document read in either pass puts a figure on it, and this article prints none. The priced comparison lives in our companion article on what each route to a decision-maker costs.
• The number of Brown class members. Cut, as described above.
• The page count of the Stewart opinion. The research file records eleven pages; the retrieval on 2026-09-02 estimated about sixteen. Neither was confirmed, so no page count is asserted, and the statements about what does not appear in that opinion are stated as being about the opinion.
• The number of times "appraisal" occurs in Davenport. An earlier pass said once. Re-testing on 2026-09-03 returned inconsistent counts, so no count is asserted. What did reproduce is the substance: the references are to valuation methodology, and no appraisal demand appears.
• Urbassik at first hand. Carried only through the Stewart court's account of it.
• Two certifications in the research file, in the Southern District of Texas and the Middle District of Florida, which were not re-fetched in either pass and are excluded from the count of six.

Corrections

This log records corrections this article makes to its own research file, to earlier passes, and to its own previous version. Every one is a case of something failing to re-verify.

Made on 2026-09-03, second pass: cross-article consistency closeout

A consistency audit compared this article against seven others in the same series and found places where two of our own pages disagreed.

Made on 2026-09-03, against the previous version of this article

Made on 2026-09-02, against the research file

Sources

Read on 2026-09-02 and re-read on 2026-09-03 except where noted.

Court opinions and orders

• Stewart v. Farmers Ins. of Columbus, Inc., 2026-Ohio-1451 (8th Dist.) - https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/8/2026/2026-Ohio-1451.pdf
• Davenport v. Progressive Direct Ins., 2025-Ohio-2449 (8th Dist.) - https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/8/2025/2025-Ohio-2449.pdf
• Supreme Court of Ohio case announcements, 2025-Ohio-5078 - https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2025/2025-Ohio-5078.pdf
• Milligan v. GEICO Gen. Ins. Co. and See v. GEICO, Nos. 22-2950, 23-742 (2d Cir., summary order) - https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/2f34b863-2ba6-42c4-81bd-1248e9633107/598/doc/22-2950_23-742_so.pdf
• Clippinger v. State Farm Auto. Ins. Co., No. 24-5421 (6th Cir. en banc) - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca6/24-5421/24-5421-2026-04-24.html
• Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. 153 (2016) - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/153/
• Chen v. Allstate Insurance Company (9th Cir. 2016) - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/13-16816/13-16816-2016-04-12.html
• Volino class certification order - https://nytotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Class%20Certification%20Order.pdf
• Volino final approval order - https://nytotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Final%20Approval%20Order.pdf
• Reynolds class certification order - https://altotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Order%20Granting%20Class%20Certification.pdf
• Brown and Bost class certification order - https://www.gatotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Class%20Certification%20Order.pdf

Settlement administrator documents

• Volino notice - https://nytotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Notice.pdf
• Volino motion for final approval - https://nytotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Motion%20for%20Final%20Approval.pdf
• Volino petition for attorneys' fees - https://nytotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Petition%20for%20Att%20Fees.pdf
• Brown long form notice (2025) - https://www.gatotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Long%20Form%20Notice%20-2025.pdf
• Brown petition for attorneys' fees - https://www.gatotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/BwnSpptPetitionAttyFees.pdf
• Reynolds settlement agreement (first obtained 2026-09-03) - https://altotallossclaim.com/Content/Documents/Settlement%20Agreement.pdf
• Reynolds settlement FAQ - https://altotallossclaim.com/Home/Faq
• Reynolds documents index - https://altotallossclaim.com/Home/Documents

Court and rule sources

• Supreme Court of Ohio daily case announcement feed - https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rss/cases/dailyannouncement.aspx
• Supreme Court of Ohio daily case announcements and opinions archive - https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/opinions-cases/daily-archive/
• Supreme Court of Ohio oral argument calendar - https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/opinions-cases/oral-arguments/oral-argument-calendar/
• Court News Ohio argument preview, 10 June 2026 - https://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/previews/26/0610/0610.asp
• Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_23

Interested source, disclosed

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce case page, status "Pending" - https://www.uschamber.com/cases/class-actions-and-mass-actions/davenport-v-progressive-direct-insurance-co. The Chamber filed an amicus brief against certification in this case, which is why its status entry is used only as a second check on whether a decision has issued and for nothing else.

General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.

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