By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Good Shepherd Food-Bank is suing a New York-based life insurance company and its local agency, alleging they botched a $1 million policy on the life of the late JoAnn Pike.

Pike was Good Shepherd’s co-founder and executive director. She died in March 2004.

Good Shepherd, based in Auburn, provides food to soup kitchens and other charities around Maine.

In a lawsuit filed at Androscoggin County Superior Court this week, Good Shepherd says it paid the insurance company MONY $2,970 on June 23, 2003, for a key-person life insurance policy.

It wanted the policy “primarily because of (Pike’s) critical contributions to the fund-raising efforts of Good Shepherd and her contributions as executive director.”

The food bank was listed as both the beneficiary and owner of the insurance policy.

Good Shepherd said a completed life insurance application supporting the one-year premium payment was given to Barresi Financial Services Inc., MONY’s agent, on June 27, 2003. Barresi has its home office in Presque Isle but maintains satellites in Lewiston and Bangor.

Marcus Barresi, the agency’s president, said Wednesday afternoon that he wasn’t aware of the lawsuit. “I thought that was all worked out,” he said.

Barresi continues to offer insurance coverage to Good Shepherd for its benefits, he said.

Good Shepherd’s suit says Pike submitted to a paramedical exam as requested by MONY on June 30, 2003. The exam didn’t reveal any basis for rejection of the policy.

Later, in October 2003, MONY obtained records from Pike’s medical provider revealing that she had been diagnosed with cancer in August 2003. The lawsuit points out that the diagnosis was made after the life insurance application, after the paramedical exam and after the effective date of a temporary insurance agreement.

MONY returned Good Shepherd’s $2,970 payment in December 2003, declining to act on the application for life insurance “on the basis that the application had expired,'” the suit alleges. MONY took that position, says the suit, because it had not received “various medical records” from Pike’s regular physician.

The lawsuit maintains that MONY’s acceptance of the first year’s policy payment represented a promise of coverage and that because Good Shepherd believed the policy to be in force, it didn’t seek alternative coverage for Pike.

It says Barresi was negligent by accepting a premium payment and representing that a temporary insurance agreement was in effect. Good Shepherd also said Barresi didn’t inform the food bank of MONY’s claim of difficulty in obtaining Pike’s medical records.

Barresi said he’ll defend against the lawsuit. Neither he nor MONY had had an opportunity to file responses to the action as of Wednesday.

Good Shepherd is being represented by James D. Poliquin of the firm Norman, Hanson & DeTroy of Portland.

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