Miguel Carbajal was on a family trip to Mexico in 2003 when he had a heart attack and died. The Denver truck driver was just 36.
That’s according to a Mexican doctor who signed the death certificate, the funeral director who handled the arrangements and Carbajal’s wife.
But the companies with which Carbajal had more than $2 million in life insurance have painted a different scenario in five lawsuits in federal court.
They say there is reason to question whether Carbajal is dead, and they refuse to pay his widow. Almost all the insurance was bought just months before he died. There was no autopsy. And the companies have witnesses who dispute some of the details of Carbajal’s death and burial.
The situation has outraged lawyers representing Maricela Carbajal, who has struggled for three years to support the couple’s four children. Everything that the companies say is suspicious has a logical explanation, said Greg Gold, who represents Maricela.
Furthermore, she long ago agreed to have her husband’s body exhumed, but the insurance companies contend they have been unable to get permission from Mexican authorities to do that.
“There are pictures of the children crying over him in the casket,” said Gold. “There’s a death certificate. The funeral-home director saw him dead. Pay these people.”
Insurance-company lawyers either did not return phone calls or declined to comment for this story.
The circumstances surrounding Miguel Carbajal’s “alleged death” are suspicious, according to a counterclaim filed by Lincoln Benefit Life Co. The evidence that supposedly establishes his death is “full of discrepancies,” according to the pleading.
A broken life
Maricela Carbajal’s lawyers say she and her four children are struggling financially and shocked by fraud allegations.
The Carbajals were in Mexico in July 2003 to buy a modest second home in Nochistlán, in the area where they had grown up, according to court documents. Both were legal and permanent residents of the United States.
Miguel had gone to nearby Octolán to buy furniture when he had a heart attack at the home of an acquaintance.
Alberto Avila Mora, a doctor there, was called to the home but could not revive Carbajal, according to pleadings on behalf of Maricela Carbajal. The doctor subsequently determined he had suffered a heart attack.
“He was dead, 100 percent, and he had no pulse,” Mora said in a videotaped interview made by lawyers for the Carbajal family.
Maricela was pregnant at the time with their fourth child. In halting English and gesturing with her hands, she said in a recent interview videotaped with her lawyers that her life “broke” when Miguel died.
Maricela Carbajal declined to be interviewed for this story.
The loss of her husband opened a difficult chapter in the lives of the Carbajals for many reasons.
Maricela is struggling to put food on the table and comfort her children, who are shocked not only by the loss of their father but by fraud allegations made by insurance companies, her lawyers said.
Her husband was devoted to her and their children, and any suggestion he would abandon them for money is shameful and outrageous, her lawyers said.
Maricela Carbajal has sued American Family Life Insurance, Lincoln Benefit Life and Conseco Life Insurance Co., seeking payment.
State Farm Life Insurance Co. and Jackson National Life Insurance Co. have sued the widow, seeking a judgment that no benefits should be paid. Several counterclaims have been filed.
In pleadings filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, several insurance companies contend there are inconsistencies in the events surrounding Miguel Carbajal’s reported death.
An investigator for Lincoln Benefit interviewed a witness who saw that Carbajal’s casket had been dug up months after his death, and it had nothing in it but dirt, according to court pleadings.
In various pleadings, one or more of the companies contend that people living and working near the place where Carbajal was said to have died didn’t know anything about the death. Witnesses to the death have avoided being interviewed.
The funeral home didn’t transport the body to the cemetery. The coffin wasn’t opened at the cemetery, contrary to local custom.
Furthermore, several insurance companies have claimed they should not have to pay because Carbajal failed to disclose that he had applied for other policies.
But lawyers for Maricela Carbajal said everything the companies think is a red flag is explainable.
Irregularities explained
A lawyer for Maricela Carbajal says there are answers to all questions raised by the insurers.
The Carbajals had multiple policies for several reasons.
Maricela and Miguel Carbajal divorced in 2002 but remarried the following year. During their separation, they had a formal agreement requiring Miguel to take out at least $1 million in life insurance, said Gold, Maricela’s lawyer.
Miguel also purchased the policies because he had a friend who had died young and left his family with nothing. He wanted his children to go to college, Gold said.
After they reconciled, Miguel and Maricela were trying to cancel some of the policies but could not get the companies to stop withdrawing money from their bank account, Gold said.
As for why witnesses have been difficult to interview, insurance investigators working in Mexico have hampered their own efforts by bringing police along as they attempted to find and interview people, said Gold.
He also explained why the funeral home didn’t take Miguel’s body to the cemetery. Gold said the funeral home had asked for an exorbitant fee to transport the body to a cemetery in Miguel’s hometown, a three- hour drive from the funeral home, so Maricela asked friends with a truck to take the coffin.
It’s true, Gold said, that the coffin wasn’t opened at the cemetery. But that’s because the body had not been embalmed and had been exposed to the July heat for two days, he said.
Also, autopsies are not routine in Mexico, Gold said. But the doctor who went to the house where Carbajal died has a stellar reputation, Gold said, and has remained steadfast in saying Carbajal died of natural causes.
Maricela’s lawyers say the doctor has been harassed by insurance investigators who want him to change Miguel’s death certificate. At times, he received several phone calls a day, according to court pleadings.
Calling themselves detectives, investigators have been “hounding and surveilling” Maricela’s family, according to court pleadings. They have told neighbors, family and friends that Miguel is alive.
Lawyers for the companies have denied all such allegations in court documents.
Gold said the insurance companies’ behavior has traumatized the Carbajal family.
“We can litigate this thing for years, or they can just exhume the body and pay her,” Gold said.
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or acaldwell@denverpost.com.
