In Higgins v. Aguilar, 246 N.J. 75, 248 A.3d 1213 (N.J. 2021), Federal Insurance Company insured a car dealership with $1 million of liability coverage for the dealership vehicles. The Federal policy purportedly extended liability coverage to customers using dealer...
Firm News
Step Down For Crime
The South Carolina Supreme Court recently considered an automobile policy stepdown clause in relationship to criminal misconduct. In Nationwide Mutual Fire Insurance Co. v. Walls, 433 S.C. 206, 858 S.E.2d 150 (S.C. 2021) an automobile accident occurred as a result of...
Failing to Initiate Settlement Negotiations is Risky Business (Reprinted from Claims Journal, November 7, 2017)
Two recent cases have addressed insurance company extracontractual exposure for failing to initiate settlement negotiations. In Stalley v. Allstate Insurance Co., 2016 WL 1752764 (M.D. Fla. April 29, 2016) the court considered the so-called “Powell rule” where the...
OHIO SUPREME COURT REINS IN “ALL SUMS” JOINT AND SEVERAL ALLOCATION
Whenever successive insurers provide concurrent coverage for the same risk, there arises an issue of allocation of the risk between the successive insurers. In light of the impracticality or impossibility of trying to determine how much of the damage took place...
IDAHO ADOPTS A BREACH OF CONTRACT STATUTE OF LIMITATION FOR UIM COVERAGE
In Klein v. Farmers Ins. Co. of Idaho, 165 Idaho 832, 453 P.3d 266 (Idaho 2019) the Idaho Supreme Court held that the UIM statute of limitations began to run on the date when the insurance company allegedly breached its contract with the insured. The Court found that...
IDAHO SUPREME COURT PERMITS UIM OFFSET
In Wood v. Farmers Ins. Co. of Idaho, 166 Idaho 43, 454 P.3d 1126 (Idaho 2019) the Court held that where a UIM policy contained an offset provision which reduced the amount of UIM coverage by the liability limit of the at-fault driver, the offset was allowed by...
MINNESOTA COURT OF APPEALS FINDS THAT INSUREDS ARE REQUIRED TO ALLOCATE SETTLEMENTS BETWEEN COVERED AND NONCOVERED CLAIMS
Recently, the Court of Appeals in King's Cove Marina, LLC v. Lambert Commercial Constr. LLC, 937 N.W.2d 458 (Minn. Ct. App. 2019), review granted (Feb. 26, 2020) held that when an insured and a claimant enter into a Miller-Shugart agreement, the parties must allocate...
CHILD ABUSE IN SCHOOL BUS DOES NOT GIVE RISE TO UM CLAIM
Recently the Supreme Court of Virginia in Corriveau v. State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Co., 836 S.E.2d 694 (Va. 2019) ruled that child abuse inflicted by a bus driver and a bus driver's aide were not covered by the victim's uninsured motorist coverage. The Court...
PROPERTY INSURERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DEPRECIATE LABOR COSTS WHEN CALCULATING ACTUAL CASH VALUE IN MISSISSIPPI
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in Mitchell v. State Farm Fire and Cas. Co., 954 F.3d 700 (5th Cir. 2020), applying Mississippi law, held that State Farm's definition of actual cash value was ambiguous and therefore had to be interpreted in the...
LABOR COSTS NOT PART OF ACTUAL CASH VALUE
Recently the Tennessee Supreme Court held that in calculating actual cash value, depreciation was part of the calculation. Where the policy does not define what depreciation means, the insurance company may depreciate the cost of the materials used in a repair...