I’m revisiting Charles Givens for two reasons: to brush off some dust scattered by the feckless advertorial in USA Today, and to update you on the Cedar Rapids lawsuit and events that have come to my attention since.
The touch: As I previously reported, Charles Givens got his start as a charismatic seminar leader peddling courses on self-esteem, then moved on to personal finance. He broke into the mainstream on such shows as “Oprah,” “Phil Donahue,” “Today” and “Larry King Live.” His Charles J. Givens Organization claims some 550,000 members, each paying at least $399 for access to the master’s Midas touch.
Some find it more of a “minus” touch. Based on advice from the Givens organization, Ron and Sally Beadle of Cedar Rapids dropped their uninsured-motorist coverage which, Givens has said, is “just a high-priced combination life insurance and hospitalization policy and thus is a complete waste of money.” Sally learned the hard way that Givens was wrong. Before they chose another insurer, Ron died in a head-on crash with an uninsured driver, leaving her and three small children short of funds.
In the first part of a two-part trial, the Iowa jury found that Givens misrepresented, among other things, the nature of uninsured-motorist coverage. The second part would have decided the damages. But before the jury could speak again, and shortly after my article was published, Givens settled with Beadle for an undisclosed amount.
I’m aware of three similar lawsuits against Givens and a fourth one cooking-all charging negligence or fraud:
Alan Craig Elsinger of Dallas claims he dropped his $250,000 policy last June on advice from the Givens organization. In December he was hit by an underinsured driver and badly injured, as was a passenger in his car. Canceling the policy saved him $134 a year in premiums. Had he kept it, he could have collected up to its face value.
Lesbia and Gerardo Martinez of Hartford, Conn., say they reduced their uninsured-motorist policy ($600,000 for two cars) to Connecticut’s effective $40,000 minimum after Lesbia read Givens’s best seller, “Wealth Without Risk.” Their annual savings: $448. Six months later, the couple and their two young sons were crumpled by a motorist driving uninsured. The Martinezes have sued not only Givens but also his publisher (and mine), Simon & Schuster. Both defendants argue that his advice, even if mistaken, is protected by the First Amendment.
Other believers (now ex-believers) say they canceled their coverage after attending Givens’s seminars. Bonnie and Gary Rinker of Anderson, Ind., are seeking recompense for their teenage daughter, Kara, who was permanently disabled by an uninsured motorcyclist. Carol Qunell of Tacoma, Wash., who was rear-ended last December by an underinsured driver, says she plans to bring suit when it’s clearer how much her treatment will cost. Givens’s lawyer didn’t return calls asking for comment,
More important than lawsuits against a celebrity is the fundamental issue raised. Who needs uninsured-motorist insurance and how much? The policy doesn’t pay at all unless the other driver is partly or wholly at fault. And good health insurance can indeed cover most of your bills. But uninsured-motorist goes much further. It covers:
(1) Lost wages, when you can’t work. You’d get broader coverage from a separate disability policy, because it’s not limited to auto accidents. But relatively few people can afford good disability insurance, especially factory workers, part-timers and the self-employed. Uninsured-motorist can also cover the cost of replacing housekeeping services.
(2) Pain and suffering. This helps pay the big bills that even good health insurance may not reach. Kara Rinker’s lifetime care, for example, will doubtless cost more than her insurer is liable for. If her father were to change jobs, there might be no health coverage for her at all.
(3) Passengers. Even if you have good health, life and disability insurance, a friend riding in your car may not. Your uninsured-motorist policy covers passengers, too.
Givens’s insurance adviser understands all this. Up until the Beadle case, Givens himself had several uninsured motorist policies, although he has since canceled. I haven’t. To help protect against a Kara Rinker catastrophe, you want coverage in the $300,000 range-remembering that, if I you have to sue, you’ll lose 33 to 40 percent in legal fees.
All farce: These run-ins with Givens were tragedies. Mine is farce. Of the artifice of humbuggeries that Givens’s lawyer placed in USA Today, three main ones need comment:
He suggests that a “hidden motive” for my coverage of his fraud trial is pique at a lawsuit he filed against me for an earlier column I wrote. In fact, I never heard of the suit. Givens apparently filed it last year in Kansas City, Mo., and never notified me. I still have not been served.
He said I “actually and shamelessly accept money without divulging [my] money-making scheme to [my] readers–something similar to what [I] criticized Charles J. Givens for doing.” About Givens, I wrote that he receives undisclosed fees from a life-insurance agency that he recommends to his followers. I’m a journalist; I have no such “schemes.” USA Today publisher Tom Curley concedes that Givens presented no proof of his charge.
He claimed that the settlement in the Beadle case acknowledges that the jury did not find fraud." Nice try, Chuck, but forget it. The jury did find fraud, decisively. Only then did he proceed to settle-and in the final document, the jury findings weren’t erased.
Hard to guess in which direction Charles Givens might flail next, or exactly what he’s apt to claim. There’s an old rule of the journalistic road that goes: “Your mother says she loves you? Check it out.” You could do worse than apply that test to anything you hear from Chuck.
