On July 19, 1994, a $10 million dollar lawsuit was filed in federal court in Oregon alleging that State Farm Insurance Company and Comprehensive Medical Review (CMR), a San Diego file review service, committed fraud when they terminated insurance benefits for a policy holder.

According to information supplied by Daniel J. Gatti, a Salem, Ore., attorney who has worked extensively with chiropractors, the complaint alleged that CMR and State Farm, together with employees and agents of both companies, developed a scheme in which file reviews were written by unqualified "scribes" and later were signed off by "signatory doctors" unlicensed in Oregon.

The complaint filed by Gatti alleges that the scribes were "college students, such as English majors, journalism majors or law students who were unqualified to render opinions or write such reports."

Additional complaints have been filed throughout Oregon against these defendants and others, Gatti stated. State Farm and CMR are being sued for racketeering, fraud, bad faith, deceitful insurance practices and interfering between the contractual rights of the physicians and patients. It is anticipated that similar complaints will be filed in several states throughout the Northwest including Alaska and Hawaii.