A proposed class action filed Aug. 4 in Montana's First Judicial District Court in Lewis and Clark County alleges State Farm systematically refuses to pay for pre- and post-repair scans when that work is performed at independent collision repair shops. Per glassBYTEs' reporting, the plaintiffs allege the denials covered pre- and post-scans and ADAS calibration across collision repairs generally — not just auto glass work.

This one is worth reading closely, because the argument at the center of it is the same one happening in your office every week.

Two Plaintiffs, Two Different Ways to Get Shorted

The case has a first-party plaintiff and a third-party plaintiff, which is deliberate.

Lana Curry is a State Farm policyholder. She alleges the carrier undervalued, reduced, or refused to pay claims on her vehicle, including refusing to pay for pre- and post-repair scans performed to verify the vehicle was safe to drive.

The second plaintiff is Francis Cote — and his background is the part that makes this more than a routine bad-faith filing. Cote is a former Montana chief deputy insurance commissioner. His vehicle was damaged by an at-fault driver insured by State Farm, and he alleges the carrier failed or refused to pay the full cost of repairing the vehicle to applicable manufacturer repair standards, including the scans, leaving him with out-of-pocket or uncompensated repair costs.

A former state insurance regulator as a named third-party claimant is not an accident. It signals the plaintiffs intend to argue this as a regulatory-compliance question, not just a contract dispute.

The Regulator Already Wrote the Rule — in 2024

The complaint's strongest hook isn't the policy language. It's a state advisory that already exists.

Montana's Commissioner of Securities and Insurance issued an Advisory Memorandum dated Aug. 21, 2024, that prohibits insurers from refusing to pay for pre- and post-repair scans. It reminds consumers they have the right to take a vehicle to the shop of their choice, and it warns insurers they may not intimidate, coerce, or threaten claimants, or offer any incentive or inducement to steer a claimant to a particular shop.

Then it gets specific about what CSI found in its complaint review: some insurers were paying for pre- and post-sublet scans when the work went through a direct repair program shop, but not paying for the same work under similar coverage circumstances at non-DRP shops. Some were paying DRP shops a higher rate for the same scan.

The advisory's language on that point, as quoted in Repairer Driven News' coverage, is unusually direct: those practices constitute illegal incentives or inducements to use DRP shops — steering — and violate §33-18-224(1)(a)(ii). And it doesn't stop at scanning. The advisory adds that it would also be illegal if an insurer used similar tactics regarding other services, such as calibration, and that an insurer may not require a customer to use a specific shop, directly or indirectly, to receive coverage or a higher reimbursement rate.

That sentence is the reason this case matters outside Montana. A state regulator put calibration reimbursement disparity on the record as a steering violation two years before anyone filed suit over it.

What the Suit Is Actually Asking For

The relief sought is broader than damages for two people. Beyond a declaratory judgment ordering State Farm to pay Curry's and Cote's claims — plus compensatory damages and interest for similarly situated class members — the suit asks the court to order State Farm to reopen and fully pay all automobile damage claims for necessary pre- and post-repair scans.

If a court grants anything close to that, the practical effect is retroactive: closed files reopened, scans repriced. That's a different order of magnitude than winning one supplement.

What It Means for Your Shop

You are not a party to this case. But you are the one generating the record it will be argued from.

Find out what your state's DOI has actually said. Montana's plaintiffs aren't relying on a novel legal theory — they're relying on a bulletin the regulator published in 2024. A surprising number of states have issued similar guidance on scanning, OEM procedures, or steering, and most shops have never read theirs. If yours has one, it's the single most useful document you can attach to a reimbursement appeal.

Document the requirement, not just the operation. A line item that says "post-repair scan" invites a denial. A line item backed by the OEM procedure that mandated it — cited by document, with the trigger condition named — is much harder to zero out. Same for calibration: the procedure that generated the requirement belongs in the file next to the result.

Track denials as data, not as one-off arguments. The Montana case is built on a pattern, not a single claim. If you're not logging which carriers deny scans and calibrations, at what rate, and whether their DRP shops get paid differently, you have no pattern to point at when it matters — for an appeal, a DOI complaint, or an attorney's call.

Keep the calibration file complete enough to stand alone. Pre-scan and post-scan reports, target setup conditions, procedure references, and the pass result — assembled so a third party who wasn't in your bay can follow it. The shops that survive a reimbursement fight are the ones whose documentation answers the question before it's asked.

The Economics Cut Both Ways

Carriers pushing back on calibration cost aren't operating in a vacuum, and it's worth knowing the counter-argument. HLDI's latest analysis of 2017–22 model year vehicles found that while collision claim severity ran about 10% higher on ADAS-equipped vehicles, claim frequency dropped enough to offset it — overall collision losses fell roughly 5%, and property-damage losses dropped nearly 30%.

In other words: the technology that makes your repairs more expensive is already saving insurers money in aggregate. That's a useful fact to have in your pocket the next time calibration is characterized as an unnecessary cost. Calibration volume keeps climbing regardless — CCC data shows calibrations now appearing on more than 35% of DRP estimates.

Where This Leaves You

Nothing has been decided. It's a complaint, and State Farm hasn't answered it yet. But the direction is clear enough: the fight over whether calibration and scanning get paid is moving out of the estimating system and into regulatory and legal venues, where documentation is the whole game. The shop that can produce a complete, procedure-referenced calibration file is in a fundamentally different position than the shop that can produce an invoice.

If you're working out which scan tools, VCIs, or calibration targets you need to produce that kind of documentation on the platforms coming through your bays, we're glad to help you think it through.