On July 7, 2004, Mehri & Skalet, along with co-counsel, initiated a ground-breaking class action lawsuit against John Hancock Life Insurance for its company-wide policy prohibiting the sale of life insurance to African-Americans in the early to mid-20th century. The lawsuit also confronts John Hancock’s practice of offering African-Americans substandard and seriously inferior life insurance products when it did sell insurance to African-Americans. These products are known as industrial or monthly debit policies and had little value. The named Plaintiff is an African-American woman whose mother had purchased life insurance policies from John Hancock in 1940s and 1950s. The lawsuit also alleges that John Hancock fraudulently concealed its practices from policy holders and from the public and that the plaintiff and the class were only recently able to discover the discrimination even though it occurred in the past. The case is currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
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