Resolving an issue of first impression, the California First District Court of Appeal recently decided that property policyholders required to submit to an examination under oath (EUO) have a right to record the entire examination proceeding, including by capturing the insurers’ representatives and adjusters on video.
It is a settled principle of insurance law that a liability insurer’s duty to defend is broader than its duty to indemnify. In most jurisdictions, if any portion of a complaint against a policyholder is even potentially covered, the insurer must defend the entire action.
The past several decades have muddied what once was a clear relationship between policyholders and their insurers. For pre-1987 occurrence-based policies in particular, policyholders face an increasingly familiar scenario: one day, they learn they are no longer dealing with the insurer that sold them insurance. A stranger has crept into the relationship.
When Frank Sinatra famously sang “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” he was probably not crooning about making a claim for insurer bad faith. New York has indeed acquired a reputation as a difficult place to obtain an award of extra-contractual damages for an insurer’s unreasonable denial of coverage—one reason that insurance companies perceive New York to be a relatively favorable venue for coverage litigation. While New York law does in fact provide remedies for insurer misconduct, a bill recently introduced in the New York State Assembly could further expand policyholder protections. The legislation would create a private right of action for policyholders to sue their insurers (and for injured parties to sue tortfeasors’ insurers directly) for unreasonable refusal or delay of coverage and for categories of damages that include attorneys’ fees, consequential damages, and punitive damages. This sweeping legislation would allow New York to “be a part of it” along with many other states, like California and Washington, that have robust statutory protections against unfair claims practices.
His daughter missing and a secret government program uncovered …
Ben Affleck’s detective thriller Hypnotic was next in line to be on the actor’s list of blockbuster films. That is, until the COVID-19 pandemic halted the film while it was still in pre-production. To insure against such business interruption risks and delay, Hypnotic’s production company, Hoosegow (Hypnotic) Productions Inc., had purchased a Film Producer’s policy from Chubb National Insurance Company.
The California Court of Appeal recently disposed of a novel attack on bad faith law launched by Zurich American Insurance Company. In Miller Marital Deduction Trust, et al. v. Zurich American Insurance Company, 2019 DJDAR (October 23, 2019), Zurich was called upon to defend a cross complaint arising in connection with long-tail pollution claims. Despite an extensive reservation of rights and a conflict of interest, Zurich refused to pay for independent counsel (Cumis counsel, in California parlance) and instead appointed panel counsel to defend. While the underlying environmental case was pending in federal court, the Millers filed a state court action against Zurich asserting that the insurer’s appointment of counsel answerable to the insurance company, in violation of the Millers’ right to independent counsel, constituted breach of contract and a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
Since 2008, Minnesota has had a bad-faith statute that penalizes an insurance company for its unreasonable denial of a first-party insurance claim. But it was only earlier this month that a Minnesota appellate court interpreted the statute to require insurance companies to conduct a reasonable investigation and fairly evaluate its results to establish a reasonable basis for denying the claim. In so doing, the court rejected the interpretation offered by the insurance company: that the policyholder must prove there are no facts or evidence upon which the insurance company could rely to deny coverage. That interpretation would have allowed insurers to rely on post hoc justifications for denying coverage. The court’s rejection of that argument is an important development in bad-faith law that will likely affect both suits brought in Minnesota and those in other jurisdictions where courts might look to this decision for guidance in connection with many types of insurance claims. Continue Reading ›
Imagine your organization has suffered significant property damage and interruption to your business as a result. The cause could be anything—a natural disaster, severe mechanical breakdown or a cyberattack. You notify your property insurance carrier and adjust the claim, submitting calculations of your losses based on the policy’s coverages and other terms. But in response, your carrier only agrees to pay a fraction of the losses, claiming that otherwise your organization would be better off than before the damage—“unjustly enriched”—and that insurance is not meant for gain, but only to put the insured in the position it would have been without the damage.
A federal court in Michigan just breathed new life into a long-running legal saga—while at the same time issuing a warning shot across the bows of insurers—by declining to dismiss an insured’s bad faith cause of action alleging its insurer wrongly decided to pay one claim before another, to the insured’s detriment.
The Flint, Mich., water crisis returned to the news recently as criminal charges were brought against additional government employees resulting from the crisis. Meanwhile, a federal court in 
Pennsylvania recently issued a ruling in an insurance case that, like Flint, related to alleged contamination in drinking water stemming from corroded pipes. The decision rejects two insurers’ attempts to avoid coverage and serves as a good reminder of some fundamental insurance law principles—the duty to defend is broad, ambiguous policy language usually is construed against the insurer, and policies should be interpreted in favor of their purpose to provide coverage. It is also a reminder that the pollution exclusion is not nearly as all-encompassing as insurers like to think it is.
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