The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held in Anderson v. National Union Fire Insurance Co. Pittsburgh, PA 476 Mass. 377, 67 N.E. 3d 1232 (2017) that post-judgment interest on a judgment against a driver and owner were not part of the damages to be trebled under...
California courts have adopted the Genuine Dispute Doctrine. Chateau Chamberay Homeowners Assn v. Associated Internat. Ins. Co., (2001) 90 Cal. App. 4th 335, 347, 108 Cal. Rptr. 2d 776 (“[A]n insurer denying or delaying the payment of policy benefits due to the...
Some insurance policies do not specifically define the term “disparagement” in the policy. When the term “disparagement” is not defined, the courts will come up with a workable definition. As an example, in Lexmark International, Inc. v. Transportation Insurance...
In Farmers Texas Cty. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Zuniga, 548 S.W.3d 646 (Tex. App. 2017), the Court found that the specific language of an automobile liability policy’s insuring agreement precluded coverage for punitive damages in the first instance. The language in the...
In Mt. Vernon Fire Ins. Co. v. Vision Aid, Inc., 875 F.3d 716 (1st Cir. 2017) (interpreting Massachusetts law), the First Circuit Court of Appeals found that the mere filing of a counterclaim did not create a conflict of interest for defense counsel. In this case, the...
In Cedillo v. Farmers Ins. Co., 408 P.3d 886 (Idaho 2017) the insured sued Farmers Insurance for bad faith arising out of the presentation of a UIM claim. In this case, Farmers did not dispute that its policy provided UIM coverage to the insured. The dispute between...
In American Family Insurance Co. v. Mid-American Grain Distributors, LLC, 958 F.3d 748 (8th Cir. 2020) (interpreting Missouri law) held that shoddy workmanship was not an occurrence. Focusing on the term “accident,” the 8th Circuit noted that Missouri courts gave the...
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...
In Lock v. American Family Insurance Co., 460 P.3d 683 (Wash. App. Div. 1 2020) the Washington court found defending against the insured’s bad faith lawsuit was not a claim denial, nor was it bad faith. The underlying case involved UIM and PIP claims under American...
In Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. v. Shilling, 2020 WL 1910499 (Md. 4/20/20), the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed the intermediate appellate court finding that the statute of limitations began to run on UIM claims when the insurance company denied an insured’s...