An attorney battling State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. fired off a letter Friday asking for copies of an agreement that Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale and the company have struck to re-evaluate Hurricane Katrina insurance claims on the Coast.

The letter from Batesville attorney Richard "Flip" Phillips requests a copy of the agreement between Dale and State Farm, plus any and all documents that might have been produced during negotiations or as part of the agreement. By law, Dale must respond within 14 days to the public records request.

Phillips also asks a number of questions in the eight-page letter. He wants to know, among other things, whether State Farm plans to follow a federal court ruling that says the company must pay for damage unless it can prove the loss was caused by water, excluded from coverage. State Farm disagrees with the decision, which it is appealing.

"This seems to be another case where the trial bar is basically looking to write your story for you," Fraser Engerman told a Sun Herald reporter late Friday afternoon, referring to attorneys such as Phillips who are suing State Farm on behalf of policyholders. "And you can quote me on that."

State Farm has previously maintained that it owes nothing unless wind damage can be separated from water damage. Company claims representatives have been accused of ordering damage reports altered when engineers failed to blame water for the loss, an allegation State Farm denies.

"State Farm's intentional mishandling of the slab cases has been the elephant in the living room from day one in the post-Katrina insurance debacle," Phillips said in an interview Friday afternoon.

Attorneys for policyholders believe the agreement is suspect because it was not court-approved and will not be supervised by a court. An agreement State Farm and a group of policyholder attorneys submitted for court approval was rejected by a federal judge, who was concerned that it failed to protect policyholders' rights.

State Farm failed to offer revisions to the agreement that would satisfy the judge's concerns. Instead, Dale announced he had reached an agreement with the company.

The agreement includes some of the provisions from the one submitted in federal court. State Farm's Engerman said one key difference is that "millions of dollars" will not go to attorneys. State Farm would have paid those fees on top of any money owed policyholders.

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