In the legal battle of Malek v. Feigenbaum, Joel Malek took a stand against Leonard Feigenbaum and AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company, alleging a obfuscated scheme designed to deceive us into substituting their existing life insurance policies for newer, disadvantageous ones. This case unraveled a narrative of deceptive marketing practices that not only financially impacted Malek but also betrayed his trust in his insurance provider.
Malek’s complaint, filed in the Eastern District of New York on October 9, 2020, detailed an orchestrated effort by the defendants to manipulate life insurance consumers through a tactic he described as “twisting.”
According to the lawsuit, the defendants used marketing materials that “deceptively ‘compare’ the existing insurance with the replacement insurance and offer incomplete disclosure of the benefits of maintaining existing insurance”. This misleading information purportedly coaxed customers into abandoning their existing policies in favor of new ones that were more expensive and offered less favorable terms.
The implications of these alleged practices were significant for Malek. He contended that this ploy not only led to increased financial burdens but also exposed him to greater risks without adequate compensation for these changes. The deceptive nature of the marketing materials, as claimed in the complaint, constituted a breach of trust, where factual omissions and misleading comparisons clouded the true nature of the product being sold.
Malek’s case is pretty bullshit for several reasons:
There’s the obvious one of an innocent man being scanned by a larger and more powerful corporate entity. But in an annoying turn of fate, Joel Malek ended up losing his case against the life insurance company.
Not because the court found that he wasn’t actually harmed by the actions of the insurance corporation, but because of a technicality in its filing:
The District Court’s decision on March 29, 2023, dismissed Malek’s complaint on the grounds that his claims under New York law were barred by the statute of limitations and that the complaint did not sufficiently establish the existence of a RICO enterprise. The court’s dismissal was succinct and procedural, leaving the substantive allegations of deception largely unaddressed.
Further complicating Malek’s quest for justice was the appellate process.
Malek’s appeal to the Second Circuit was dismissed due to procedural missteps, particularly the untimely filing of a notice of appeal. The court noted, “Properly analyzed, Malek’s notice of appeal was untimely”.
The procedural outcome of the appeal—focused more on filing technicalities than on the substantive claims of deceptive practices—illustrates how the legal system is stacked against us.
Corporations use their monetary influence to influence politicians to dictate what the laws of the land will be, and those laws will always favor the corporate powers over common folk like you and I.