6 ms·

New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

130 points by Geekette 5mo ago

selimthegrim 5mo ago
It sure would be nice if we had an actual economy around here. That being said, I have definitely been given a speeding ticket by state police on that stretch of I-10 well before this all happened, and when I had a car crash under the Claiborne expressway on the Sundays when people drag race under the bridge I assure you these "runners" were nowhere to be found. Possibly because the local biker gang whose bikes the other party hit before me dragged him back to the scene of the accident for the responding officer to interview. I do remember someone in the crowd that helped me open my door saying “oh you hurt? Oh you got hurt you got hurt bad you got hurt in your spine, etc..” kind of prompting me and/or fishing for a response so who knows if that was them or just that the general mentality has permeated the community.
- fortran77 5mo ago
  People will do anything but work for a living. > Tt was surprisingly easy to find locals willing to risk their lives for money. Nearly a quarter of New Orleans residents live in poverty, and the prospect of a substantial windfall for a few hours’ work apparently outweighed any fear of getting into a car that was about to take part in a high-speed accident.
  - russdill 5mo ago
    I'm not defending criminal activity here, but you seem to be completely brushing off the fact that unemployment among African Americans in New Orleans hit a peak of 52% in 2011.
  - gottorf 5mo ago
    > People will do anything but work for a living. It's just engrained in certain cultures. In fact, the lengths to which some people will go to avoid working for a living is stupendous. I've heard tell of organized crime in my area that sure sounds like a lot of work for not that much pay, i.e. no different than a low-end job. Like that old quote about entrepreneurs being people who work 100 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week, but some twisted parallel of that.
    - fortran77 5mo ago
      Or the Freakonimics article that points out most drug dealers make less than minimum wage (Summarized in this talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_the_freakonomics_of_crack_dealing https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_the_freakonomics_of_...)
    - AngryData 5mo ago
      There are a lot of perks to drug dealing for low pay versus working fast food or customer service in a store for low pay. If you work at Macy's you always gotta look decent and be smiley and friendly, if you sell cocaine you can tell bad customers to go fuck themselves and do your work hungover and wearing dirty sweat pants. If you deal near or out of your house you don't have a real commute, can work any schedule you like, don't have to ask permission for any decisions, basically the same as many 1-2 person businesses except with unusually high demand.
      - selimthegrim 5mo ago
        Often car washes or clothing stores are fronts for you know what.
randycupertino 5mo ago
Note the owner of the auto body shop and alleged leader of the fraud ring was indicted for murdering one of his co-conspirators who flipped and was becoming a witness: https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/witness-in-louisiana-staged-accident-scam-was-murdered-indictment-federal-investigation-insurance-fraud-crash-traffic/289-46e93062-7149-4267-b09c-d2b05efa3450 https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/witness-in-louisian... > Ryan Harris and Jovanna Gardner were indicted Monday for witness tampering through murder and conspiracy to retaliate against a witness through murder in addition to mail and wire fraud for their alleged participation in the staged wrecks. > The pair are accused in the Sept. 22, 2020, execution-style shooting of Cornelius Garrison, who had secretly been cooperating with the FBI, was a major setback as authorities tried to climb the ladder from small-time scammers and street-level organizers to the attorneys and doctors whom they say raked in millions of dollars through bogus lawsuits and even unnecessary surgeries. > So far, the case has led to 52 people being indicted and 44 of them pleading guilty, but only a single attorney, Danny Patrick Keating, has entered a guilty in exchange for his cooperation.
- vablings 5mo ago
  It really feels like the FBI got this man killed with a sloppy indictment. The fact that information that only could have come from Garrison was directly the reason he was executed
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > the FBI got this man killed with a sloppy indictment How do we know that’s how they discovered Garrison was cooperating?
    - bonsai_spool 5mo ago
      Garrison was killed four days after the indictment was released. From the text: > On September 18, 2020, the Justice Department unsealed a seven-count indictment charging Garrison with “staging over fifty accidents.” Alfortish and Motta weren’t indicted or named in the document, but they were described, respectively, as “Co-Conspirator A” and “Attorney B.” Garrison’s coöperation with the F.B.I. wasn’t referenced in the text—and it might have seemed that charging him in such a public fashion would be a good way to conceal his role as an informant. But a close reading of the filing encouraged certain inferences. One stray sentence asserted that “Co-Conspirator A instructed Garrison on the number of passengers to include in staged collisions.” Alfortish might have made some unconventional life choices, but he wasn’t a total idiot. He certainly hadn’t supplied that information to the Feds—and the only other person who could have done so was Garrison. > Four days after the indictment was made public, Garrison had dinner with his mother, Sandra Fontenette, who was seventy-four, at the tidy condominium that she owned, on Foy Street. They ate gumbo and talked. Garrison had been texting with a woman named Kim that afternoon, and they had made plans to hang out after dinner. At around eight-thirty, the doorbell rang, and Garrison went to meet her. But, upon opening the front door, he shouted to his mother, “Get down!” Ten shots rang out, and Garrison collapsed on the floor, dead.
themafia 5mo ago
> and today’s large trucks are so computerized that they operate almost like airplanes Nonsense. Almost no vehicle even comes with anything like this installed. Some carriers will add driver monitoring computers, and they will emit tones under certain conditions, hard breaking, lane departure, too little following distance; however, to compare these simple alerts to the level of automation in an aircraft is just daffy. Just finding a GPS that understands vehicle heights and bridge underpass limits is still a significant challenge. So these are never built into any truck I've ever seen. Every driver has a third party device connected up for this purpose. Since those do a terrible job with satellite views most drivers _also_ use a cellphone for the additional navigation assistance it can provide. On top of that you have things like Jake Breaks, Air Suspension controls, and Differential controls that are important for operating the vehicle but are not at all automated. Another factor is weight distribuiton. The truck has nothing for this. After you pick up your load you're probably going to hit a Love's or other fuel station so you can use the CAT scale to weigh your truck. If there is too much weight on one axle you need to move your tandems to redistribute the weight. You can be underweight but still get an overweight ticket if you don't manage this correctly. California has specific limits as to how far your axle can be from your kingpin.
- adolph 5mo ago
  > weight distribuiton. The truck has nothing for this Could this be inferred from the air suspension controls? https://www.airliftcompany.com/workshop/finding-correct-air-pressure https://www.airliftcompany.com/workshop/finding-correct-air-...
  - actionfromafar 5mo ago
    Damn. There's a product in there somewhere.
    - adolph 5mo ago
      just slap some tpms sensors inside the bags and bobs your uncle https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicAdvice/comments/11iau0t/tpms_scanner/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicAdvice/comments/11iau0t/tpm...
inejge 5mo ago
https://archive.ph/yvUA3 https://archive.ph/yvUA3
hydrogen7800 5mo ago
Interesting read. This may be unfair to Louisiana based on this case, but I've heard the USA described as a federation of a bunch of states and some 3rd world countries.
- wakawaka28 5mo ago
  I think you can find something bad in every state, even "rich" ones. Edit: Who the hell would downvote this?
  - bombcar 5mo ago
    You’re not allowed to suggest anything could be wrong with rich states.
- wmf 5mo ago
  I've read about similar fraud rings in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.
  - shreveport 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - pavel_lishin 5mo ago
      What's the funny thing?
      - selimthegrim 5mo ago
        Just a garden variety racist pretending they live in the state
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- egypturnash 5mo ago
  New Orleans native here. It's not unfair. We're consistently one of the worst states in the nation in so many measures. Corruption is rampant.
fortran77 5mo ago
The "three people in car" is a very useful tell for criminal activity. I've seen in home burglar rings (one driver, one lookout, and one person to enter the home), catalytic converter thieves (driver, lookout, and "saw man"), etc. Not sure why they need the same patter of three here, but I guess one person will be the one who goes to the hospital, etc. It's like they all read the same "criminal" forums to learn techniques. From the article: > Garrison would later recall, for example, that Alfortish had cautioned him to limit the number of passengers to three, because four might raise “red flags.” In any event, given the extreme danger of a crime like this, the penalties should be more like that of a kidnapping (e.g., life in prison) and not just the 6 months suspended they'll see for insurance fraud. But that would never happen in Louisiana. The New Yorker was refreshingly frank in this piece. I expected them to tap dance around several things they hit head on. It's also a good reminder that in this day and age 360 degree dashcams are a must. If I were a professional truck driver, I'd have a bodycam, too.
- selimthegrim 5mo ago
  Nor should it. You have to be realistic here - if we send everybody who ever did murder two up to Angola for life you would need like two more Angolas. Let’s not even get to kidnapping.
  - fortran77 5mo ago
    The prosecutors see slamming as "non-violent". Something is seriously wrong with them. > Peter Strasser, the U.S. Attorney, was in his office when one of his prosecutors entered, looking shaken, and said that the key coöperating witness in the slammers case had just been murdered. “I would never have believed it, because this was a nonviolent case,”
- rascul 5mo ago
  Three people in a car is not a tell for anything except three people in a car.
- tristor 5mo ago
  The main reason these fraudsters do 3 people in the car is it allows them to up the payout, bodily injury claims are per-incident/per-person, which means more people is a larger payout that they then share with each other. Stuff like this is why I have dashcams in all directions on my car and conceal carry (if you catch them in the act, these fraudsters are known to get violent against the innocent driver).
brookst 5mo ago
I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative will die on the hospital so they can get a payout, or when people are crashing into trucks or promoting BS snake oil on instagram. It’s an indictment of the people involved for sure, but our social and economic systems have created the perverse incentives that these people are betting on. And it seems to be accelerating.
- selimthegrim 5mo ago
  Exactly how many investors do you think are investing in New Orleans East? I drive around and I see signs on telephone poles for people promoting renting cars so you can rent it to other people for income like Uber or something.
  - brookst 5mo ago
    Probably none? I certainly didn’t mean to imply there is significant investment.
    - cucumber3732842 5mo ago
      I follow local politics in my own city of similar means. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for bigco corporate developers (though they're not above doing something if perfect circumstances pop up) and the long tail of mom and pop investors, slumlord and "maybe you can rent my cousin's vacant storefront for your shop" type investment activity that would normally make those investments and over time uplift a community have been kicked out of the game by the regulation that municipalities have been forced by the states (who themselves are often forced by the feds) to adopt as a pre-requisite to qualifying for federal grant funding for the projects they need that funding to afford because without it they can't do so in a manner compliant with applicable law.
adi_kurian 5mo ago
Harrowing. That said, excellent journalism. I loved the artwork.
- steve-atx-7600 5mo ago
  Yes. The Atlantic USED to have long form through provoking articles like this that I missed. This is the second article I’ve read from them recently that makes me glad I recently subscribed to the New Yorker.
- boogieknite 5mo ago
  skipped the byline and halfway through realized the voice felt familiar. if you like this and are unfamiliar with Radden Keefe then check out The Snakehead and Say Nothing. im sure everything he writes is great but can personally recommend those
Jgrubb 5mo ago
My best friend is an insurance attorney in New Orleans, and has been telling me this saga for years now. It's wild to see this coming out.
- steve-atx-7600 5mo ago
  It is definitely well known in the insurance industry. Companies are hesitant to expand into the state of LA because of the high risk of litigation. Doing business there effectively requires being able to model the risk of litigation in addition to hurricane/wind/storm loss. Both are tough problems to solve to have to be a top insurer - as in being able to price according to risk better than competitors that use “broad strokes” in the direction of higher premiums regardless of risk.
- Jgrubb 5mo ago
  update from my bud: > Almost all of the references to the “law firm hired by trucking companies” refer to my firm. He's been telling me about this scammy former stunt woman attorney since before covid.
- Balgair 5mo ago
  Just so everyone here knows, any LA lawyer is a darn smart person. LA has kinda a dual legal system that it inherited from the French and Spanish codified law system out of Napoleon (yes that one), and ultimately from Roman law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana Just the first paragraph there is a confusing mess and the rest of the article doesn't get any better (to me at least). Suffice to say, having to pass the bar is tough enough, but having to do it while 'speaking two languages' in terms of law systems is so much more harder.
  - Jgrubb 5mo ago
    From my source: > Things that are not true: not every Louisiana lawyer is smart. Some of them are very dumb. > You don’t have to speak 2 languages. > Louisiana has a mixed jurisdiction, just like everywhere else in the United States. The difference is that common law relies on stare decisis, and Louisiana relies on the civil code as the basis for law. > It is true that Louisiana originally took different parts of the law from historical bases that are uncommon for America. Our property law comes from the visigoths or something. > However, the Napoleonic code did not actually arrive in Louisiana until two or three years after the civil code of Louisiana was officially adopted, so it is not based on Napoleon code, though that is frequently asserted.
flitzofolov 5mo ago
One of my favorite podcasts, "Gone South", did a two part feature about this phenomena in July of 2025. Well worth the listen. Pt. 1: https://pca.st/1clncbd7 https://pca.st/1clncbd7
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
memcg 5mo ago
Lots of blame to go around "60 Minutes, the storied investigative news program of CBS, Sunday night turned its cameras on one of the growing problems within the U.S. trucking industry: chameleon carriers." These companies quickly shed any record of accidents and safety violations simply by changing their names and slapping new DOT numbers on their trucks. https://www.truckersnews.com/videos/video/15822044/60-minutes-focuses-on-ticking-time-bomb-of-chameleon-carriers https://www.truckersnews.com/videos/video/15822044/60-minute...

130 points by Geekette 5mo ago

It sure would be nice if we had an actual economy around here. That being said, I have definitely been given a speeding ticket by state police on that stretch of I-10 well before this all happened, and when I had a car crash under the Claiborne expressway on the Sundays when people drag race under the bridge I assure you these "runners" were nowhere to be found. Possibly because the local biker gang whose bikes the other party hit before me dragged him back to the scene of the accident for the responding officer to interview. I do remember someone in the crowd that helped me open my door saying “oh you hurt? Oh you got hurt you got hurt bad you got hurt in your spine, etc..” kind of prompting me and/or fishing for a response so who knows if that was them or just that the general mentality has permeated the community.

fortran77 5mo ago
People will do anything but work for a living. > Tt was surprisingly easy to find locals willing to risk their lives for money. Nearly a quarter of New Orleans residents live in poverty, and the prospect of a substantial windfall for a few hours’ work apparently outweighed any fear of getting into a car that was about to take part in a high-speed accident.
- russdill 5mo ago
  I'm not defending criminal activity here, but you seem to be completely brushing off the fact that unemployment among African Americans in New Orleans hit a peak of 52% in 2011.
- gottorf 5mo ago
  > People will do anything but work for a living. It's just engrained in certain cultures. In fact, the lengths to which some people will go to avoid working for a living is stupendous. I've heard tell of organized crime in my area that sure sounds like a lot of work for not that much pay, i.e. no different than a low-end job. Like that old quote about entrepreneurs being people who work 100 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week, but some twisted parallel of that.
  - fortran77 5mo ago
    Or the Freakonimics article that points out most drug dealers make less than minimum wage (Summarized in this talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_the_freakonomics_of_crack_dealing https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_the_freakonomics_of_...)
  - AngryData 5mo ago
    There are a lot of perks to drug dealing for low pay versus working fast food or customer service in a store for low pay. If you work at Macy's you always gotta look decent and be smiley and friendly, if you sell cocaine you can tell bad customers to go fuck themselves and do your work hungover and wearing dirty sweat pants. If you deal near or out of your house you don't have a real commute, can work any schedule you like, don't have to ask permission for any decisions, basically the same as many 1-2 person businesses except with unusually high demand.
    - selimthegrim 5mo ago
      Often car washes or clothing stores are fronts for you know what.

randycupertino 5mo ago

Note the owner of the auto body shop and alleged leader of the fraud ring was indicted for murdering one of his co-conspirators who flipped and was becoming a witness: https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/witness-in-louisiana-staged-accident-scam-was-murdered-indictment-federal-investigation-insurance-fraud-crash-traffic/289-46e93062-7149-4267-b09c-d2b05efa3450 https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/witness-in-louisian... > Ryan Harris and Jovanna Gardner were indicted Monday for witness tampering through murder and conspiracy to retaliate against a witness through murder in addition to mail and wire fraud for their alleged participation in the staged wrecks. > The pair are accused in the Sept. 22, 2020, execution-style shooting of Cornelius Garrison, who had secretly been cooperating with the FBI, was a major setback as authorities tried to climb the ladder from small-time scammers and street-level organizers to the attorneys and doctors whom they say raked in millions of dollars through bogus lawsuits and even unnecessary surgeries. > So far, the case has led to 52 people being indicted and 44 of them pleading guilty, but only a single attorney, Danny Patrick Keating, has entered a guilty in exchange for his cooperation.

vablings 5mo ago
It really feels like the FBI got this man killed with a sloppy indictment. The fact that information that only could have come from Garrison was directly the reason he was executed
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > the FBI got this man killed with a sloppy indictment How do we know that’s how they discovered Garrison was cooperating?
  - bonsai_spool 5mo ago
    Garrison was killed four days after the indictment was released. From the text: > On September 18, 2020, the Justice Department unsealed a seven-count indictment charging Garrison with “staging over fifty accidents.” Alfortish and Motta weren’t indicted or named in the document, but they were described, respectively, as “Co-Conspirator A” and “Attorney B.” Garrison’s coöperation with the F.B.I. wasn’t referenced in the text—and it might have seemed that charging him in such a public fashion would be a good way to conceal his role as an informant. But a close reading of the filing encouraged certain inferences. One stray sentence asserted that “Co-Conspirator A instructed Garrison on the number of passengers to include in staged collisions.” Alfortish might have made some unconventional life choices, but he wasn’t a total idiot. He certainly hadn’t supplied that information to the Feds—and the only other person who could have done so was Garrison. > Four days after the indictment was made public, Garrison had dinner with his mother, Sandra Fontenette, who was seventy-four, at the tidy condominium that she owned, on Foy Street. They ate gumbo and talked. Garrison had been texting with a woman named Kim that afternoon, and they had made plans to hang out after dinner. At around eight-thirty, the doorbell rang, and Garrison went to meet her. But, upon opening the front door, he shouted to his mother, “Get down!” Ten shots rang out, and Garrison collapsed on the floor, dead.

themafia 5mo ago

> and today’s large trucks are so computerized that they operate almost like airplanes Nonsense. Almost no vehicle even comes with anything like this installed. Some carriers will add driver monitoring computers, and they will emit tones under certain conditions, hard breaking, lane departure, too little following distance; however, to compare these simple alerts to the level of automation in an aircraft is just daffy. Just finding a GPS that understands vehicle heights and bridge underpass limits is still a significant challenge. So these are never built into any truck I've ever seen. Every driver has a third party device connected up for this purpose. Since those do a terrible job with satellite views most drivers _also_ use a cellphone for the additional navigation assistance it can provide. On top of that you have things like Jake Breaks, Air Suspension controls, and Differential controls that are important for operating the vehicle but are not at all automated. Another factor is weight distribuiton. The truck has nothing for this. After you pick up your load you're probably going to hit a Love's or other fuel station so you can use the CAT scale to weigh your truck. If there is too much weight on one axle you need to move your tandems to redistribute the weight. You can be underweight but still get an overweight ticket if you don't manage this correctly. California has specific limits as to how far your axle can be from your kingpin.

adolph 5mo ago
> weight distribuiton. The truck has nothing for this Could this be inferred from the air suspension controls? https://www.airliftcompany.com/workshop/finding-correct-air-pressure https://www.airliftcompany.com/workshop/finding-correct-air-...
- actionfromafar 5mo ago
  Damn. There's a product in there somewhere.
  - adolph 5mo ago
    just slap some tpms sensors inside the bags and bobs your uncle https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicAdvice/comments/11iau0t/tpms_scanner/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicAdvice/comments/11iau0t/tpm...

inejge 5mo ago

https://archive.ph/yvUA3 https://archive.ph/yvUA3

hydrogen7800 5mo ago

Interesting read. This may be unfair to Louisiana based on this case, but I've heard the USA described as a federation of a bunch of states and some 3rd world countries.

wakawaka28 5mo ago
I think you can find something bad in every state, even "rich" ones. Edit: Who the hell would downvote this?
- bombcar 5mo ago
  You’re not allowed to suggest anything could be wrong with rich states.
wmf 5mo ago
I've read about similar fraud rings in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.
- shreveport 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - pavel_lishin 5mo ago
    What's the funny thing?
    - selimthegrim 5mo ago
      Just a garden variety racist pretending they live in the state
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
egypturnash 5mo ago
New Orleans native here. It's not unfair. We're consistently one of the worst states in the nation in so many measures. Corruption is rampant.

fortran77 5mo ago

The "three people in car" is a very useful tell for criminal activity. I've seen in home burglar rings (one driver, one lookout, and one person to enter the home), catalytic converter thieves (driver, lookout, and "saw man"), etc. Not sure why they need the same patter of three here, but I guess one person will be the one who goes to the hospital, etc. It's like they all read the same "criminal" forums to learn techniques. From the article: > Garrison would later recall, for example, that Alfortish had cautioned him to limit the number of passengers to three, because four might raise “red flags.” In any event, given the extreme danger of a crime like this, the penalties should be more like that of a kidnapping (e.g., life in prison) and not just the 6 months suspended they'll see for insurance fraud. But that would never happen in Louisiana. The New Yorker was refreshingly frank in this piece. I expected them to tap dance around several things they hit head on. It's also a good reminder that in this day and age 360 degree dashcams are a must. If I were a professional truck driver, I'd have a bodycam, too.

selimthegrim 5mo ago
Nor should it. You have to be realistic here - if we send everybody who ever did murder two up to Angola for life you would need like two more Angolas. Let’s not even get to kidnapping.
- fortran77 5mo ago
  The prosecutors see slamming as "non-violent". Something is seriously wrong with them. > Peter Strasser, the U.S. Attorney, was in his office when one of his prosecutors entered, looking shaken, and said that the key coöperating witness in the slammers case had just been murdered. “I would never have believed it, because this was a nonviolent case,”
rascul 5mo ago
Three people in a car is not a tell for anything except three people in a car.
tristor 5mo ago
The main reason these fraudsters do 3 people in the car is it allows them to up the payout, bodily injury claims are per-incident/per-person, which means more people is a larger payout that they then share with each other. Stuff like this is why I have dashcams in all directions on my car and conceal carry (if you catch them in the act, these fraudsters are known to get violent against the innocent driver).

brookst 5mo ago

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative will die on the hospital so they can get a payout, or when people are crashing into trucks or promoting BS snake oil on instagram. It’s an indictment of the people involved for sure, but our social and economic systems have created the perverse incentives that these people are betting on. And it seems to be accelerating.

selimthegrim 5mo ago
Exactly how many investors do you think are investing in New Orleans East? I drive around and I see signs on telephone poles for people promoting renting cars so you can rent it to other people for income like Uber or something.
- brookst 5mo ago
  Probably none? I certainly didn’t mean to imply there is significant investment.
  - cucumber3732842 5mo ago
    I follow local politics in my own city of similar means. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for bigco corporate developers (though they're not above doing something if perfect circumstances pop up) and the long tail of mom and pop investors, slumlord and "maybe you can rent my cousin's vacant storefront for your shop" type investment activity that would normally make those investments and over time uplift a community have been kicked out of the game by the regulation that municipalities have been forced by the states (who themselves are often forced by the feds) to adopt as a pre-requisite to qualifying for federal grant funding for the projects they need that funding to afford because without it they can't do so in a manner compliant with applicable law.

adi_kurian 5mo ago

Harrowing. That said, excellent journalism. I loved the artwork.

steve-atx-7600 5mo ago
Yes. The Atlantic USED to have long form through provoking articles like this that I missed. This is the second article I’ve read from them recently that makes me glad I recently subscribed to the New Yorker.
boogieknite 5mo ago
skipped the byline and halfway through realized the voice felt familiar. if you like this and are unfamiliar with Radden Keefe then check out The Snakehead and Say Nothing. im sure everything he writes is great but can personally recommend those

Jgrubb 5mo ago

My best friend is an insurance attorney in New Orleans, and has been telling me this saga for years now. It's wild to see this coming out.

steve-atx-7600 5mo ago
It is definitely well known in the insurance industry. Companies are hesitant to expand into the state of LA because of the high risk of litigation. Doing business there effectively requires being able to model the risk of litigation in addition to hurricane/wind/storm loss. Both are tough problems to solve to have to be a top insurer - as in being able to price according to risk better than competitors that use “broad strokes” in the direction of higher premiums regardless of risk.
Jgrubb 5mo ago
update from my bud: > Almost all of the references to the “law firm hired by trucking companies” refer to my firm. He's been telling me about this scammy former stunt woman attorney since before covid.
Balgair 5mo ago
Just so everyone here knows, any LA lawyer is a darn smart person. LA has kinda a dual legal system that it inherited from the French and Spanish codified law system out of Napoleon (yes that one), and ultimately from Roman law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Louisiana Just the first paragraph there is a confusing mess and the rest of the article doesn't get any better (to me at least). Suffice to say, having to pass the bar is tough enough, but having to do it while 'speaking two languages' in terms of law systems is so much more harder.
- Jgrubb 5mo ago
  From my source: > Things that are not true: not every Louisiana lawyer is smart. Some of them are very dumb. > You don’t have to speak 2 languages. > Louisiana has a mixed jurisdiction, just like everywhere else in the United States. The difference is that common law relies on stare decisis, and Louisiana relies on the civil code as the basis for law. > It is true that Louisiana originally took different parts of the law from historical bases that are uncommon for America. Our property law comes from the visigoths or something. > However, the Napoleonic code did not actually arrive in Louisiana until two or three years after the civil code of Louisiana was officially adopted, so it is not based on Napoleon code, though that is frequently asserted.

flitzofolov 5mo ago

One of my favorite podcasts, "Gone South", did a two part feature about this phenomena in July of 2025. Well worth the listen. Pt. 1: https://pca.st/1clncbd7 https://pca.st/1clncbd7

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

memcg 5mo ago

Lots of blame to go around "60 Minutes, the storied investigative news program of CBS, Sunday night turned its cameras on one of the growing problems within the U.S. trucking industry: chameleon carriers." These companies quickly shed any record of accidents and safety violations simply by changing their names and slapping new DOT numbers on their trucks. https://www.truckersnews.com/videos/video/15822044/60-minutes-focuses-on-ticking-time-bomb-of-chameleon-carriers https://www.truckersnews.com/videos/video/15822044/60-minute...