Lyles did not meet Allstate’s newly elected production quota of standard (low risk) auto policies, while he was quite capable of producing non-standard (high risk) auto policies due to the community he worked with. He had been criticized in the past by the administration on this issue. He allegedly believed that this newly elected production quota was a pretext to terminate him to prevent him from selling Allstate policies to minorities; thus, a discrimination against minority. Allstate allegedly appropriated his book of business, in which he had an economic interest, and then sold it to another agent without passing on the sold price of the book to him. He accused Allstate of not delivering on 4/19/20 the letter of termination to the address stated in the contract he signed with Allstate. He allegedly did not learn about the termination until he received an email from Allstate on 5/20/20 that he would be terminated on 5/30/20. Only left him 10 days to sell his agency.
The case has been settled on 1/12/22. As usually the terms of settlement are confidential. We thus don’t know: Could a production quota be limited to one type of product only? Could Allstate appropriate an agent’s book and sell it to another agent, presumably for a good profit? Could Allstate send not a copy of the termination letter to an address stated in the contract?