Adventures in the Law: Make That Four Bear Claws, Please!

Brown bears are not unheard of in Lake Arrowhead, California. After all, the town is located in the San Bernadino Mountains, surrounded by the San Bernadino National Forest. Nor is it unheard of for bears to cause damage. As the saying goes, bears will be bears.

But these incidents were unlike any the insurance investigators—from three different companies—had ever seen or even heard of. According to the claims, documented by video recordings, one rogue brown bear had attacked three different vehicles, all of them high-end---a Rolls-Royce Ghost and two Mercedes Benzes--causing an estimated $140,000 in damage.

But there were things about these bear-meets-auto incidents that raised the concern—and suspicion—of the investigators. For one thing, the bear’s movements as it plodded around the cars didn’t seem at all, well, bear-like. And what about the shot of the bear resting its front leg on the steering wheel, the way a tired commuter might rest his arm after a long day at the office?

And what about the damage, the claw marks slashing across the rich leather interiors?

Why were the marks so amazingly even, almost as though machine-produced rather than bear-made?

This was clearly a case for the authorities, so the insurance companies called in the big guns: investigators from the CDI, the California Department of Insurance. And it didn’t take too many reruns of the videos for the ace CDI investigators to reach a preliminary conclusion that the vandal in all three videos was not a bear but, in fact, a human in a bear suit!

But wait! As the CDI investigators reflected on their own credentials, it occurred to them that they were experts in insurance but not in ursinology, the study of bears. Accordingly, they called in a biologist from the CDFW, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

After studying the videos closely, the CDFW biologist, drawing on his deep ursinological knowledge, confirmed the suspicions of the insurance company representatives and CDI investigators: That was no bear, brown or otherwise! It was a human wearing a bear suit--a hirsute bear suit!

The pieces had fallen into place: The “bear” walked like a human because it was a human. It rested its “leg” on the steering wheel like a human because the “leg” was actually an arm—a human arm. And those suspiciously regular “claw” marks were made by a kitchen implement, the sort used to shred meat.

That’s when the CDI launched Operation Bear Claw. Detectives executed search warrants at the homes of the insurance claimants and discovered one full-body brown bear suit, with meat shredders attached to the front paws.

Three men and one woman were arrested on charges of insurance fraud and conspiracy.

There’s no truth to the rumor that San Bernadino-area brown bears are considering a libel suit against the defendants. The headline Bears Plan Suit Over Bear Suit never actually appeared.