The Maine Supreme Court in Harlor v. Amica Mutual Ins. Co., 2016 WL 6518589 (ME November 3, 2016) held that when an insurance company refuses to defend its insured on a mixed complaint containing allegations of both potentially covered and uncovered claims the insurer...
Kentucky Supreme Court held in Philadelphia Indem. Ins. Co., Inc. v. Tryon, 502 S.W.3d 585 (Ky. 2016) that UIM exclusion pertaining to owned-but-not-scheduled automobiles were enforceable under Kentucky law provided that the policy expressly and plainly apprised the...
In Nickerson v. Stonebridge Life Ins. Co., 5 Cal.App.5th 1, 209 Cal.Rptr.3d 690 (2nd Dist. 2016), the California Court of Appeals recently reduced a $19M punitive damages award in an insurance bad faith case to $475,000 applying a 10:1 ratio of compensatory damages to...
In Baldwin v. AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah, 204 Cal.Rptr 3d 433 (1st Dist. 2016), the Court held that an automobile insurer had no obligation to pay the "pre-accident value" of the insured vehicle under the policy's collision coverage provision which...
The Idaho Supreme Court in Gearhart v. Mutual of Enumclaw Ins. Co., 160 Idaho 666, 378 P.3d 454 (Idaho 2016), found that a UIM anti-stacking provision was ambiguous and, therefore, unenforceable. In Gearhart, the Court considered a UIM policy's anti-stacking clause...
Recently, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Coker v. American Guar. & Liab. Ins. Co., 825 F.3d 1287 (11th Cir. 2016) (applying Georgia law) held that UM policy exhaustion requirements were enforceable under Georgia law. The Court found that Georgia's UM...
In Steel v. Philadelphia Indemnity Ins. Co., 195 Wash.App. 811, 381 P.3d 111 (Wash. App. 2016), the Washington Court of Appeals held that insurance companies do not waive attorney-client privilege or work product protection when their insured enters into a covenant...
The California Court of Appeals recently held that an excess judgment was not a necessary element to an equitable subrogation claim brought by an excess insurer against a primary insurer when the primary insurer failed to settle the underlying case. In ACE American...
In The Home Loan Investment Co. v. St. Paul Mercury Ins. Co., 827 F.3d 1256 (10th Cir. 2016), the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a property insurance company's denial of a fairly debatable claim was not per se reasonable. The insurer, St. Paul Mercury Ins....
In Barickman v. Mercury Cas. Co., 2 Cal.App.5th 508, 206 Cal.Rptr.3d 699 (2d Dist. 2016), an insurance company's refusal to consent to additional release language which was designed to preserve the claimant's rights to receive criminal restitution from the insured...