Much of the law surrounding extra-contractual or bad faith liability for insurance carriers centers on whether the insurer has properly discharged its duties to its insured early in a claim, such as by agreeing to defend the insured in a newly filed lawsuit.
A Gwinnett County jury unanimously imposed a $1.7 billion verdict, the largest in state history, against Ford Motor Co. on Friday in a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from a 2014 rollover crash that killed a Middle Georgia couple.
Residents in the McKinney fire burn area sued PacifiCorp this week, alleging that sparks from the utility’s high-voltage transmission lines and other equipment ignited the deadly blaze last month near the California-Oregon border.
It appears that there is a growing trend throughout the United States that is reducing barriers and making it easier for insureds to establish their bad faith claims against their insurers, thereby expanding the scope of an insurer’s potential exposure to claims of bad faith.
Market watchers and participants have noticed an uptick in new legal entrants and public adjusters entering Louisiana as firms look to grab a slice of the claims pie - and some are using ‘concerning’ tactics, industry insiders have warned.
Social inflation, or the rise of insurers’ costs to cover claims above general economic inflation, is a growing threat to insurance affordability. The struggle to quantify social inflation’s causes is one reason policymakers have yet to reduce its impact.
On August 12, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota dismissed a policyholder’s complaint seeking a declaration that $600,000 in social engineering fraud loss fell within a crime policy’s computer fraud coverage.
How do businesses/defendants and carriers combat the effects of social inflation? It is definitely not a simple challenge, but here are three key considerations.
Aloha Petroleum, a subsidiary of oil and gas giant Sunoco, has sued an AIG unit, accusing the insurer of breaching insurance contracts by refusing to defend it in a pair of lawsuits filed by the Hawaiian government alleging that the gas chain contributed to climate change.
It is no secret that Florida’s residential property insurance market has experienced a tumultuous past couple of years. Within the past two years alone, a myriad of Florida’s residential property insurance carriers have stopped writing or renewing policies within the state, have cancelled existing policies, or have requested steep rate increases in order to deal with the soaring litigation costs related to roof and wind damage claims.
When a computed tomography (CT) scanner was destroyed as a result of two fires at a storage facility, claims were presented and suits filed against the warehouse, Blocker Storage. Associated paid its limit of liability and received a release from the insured for Associated and all of the related companies.
The general liability market has changed beyond recognition since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ever-increasing economic and social inflation, medical expenses and litigation financing have all resulted in spiraling claim losses and legal costs, which continue to outstrip rates.
A Delaware bankruptcy judge has approved parts of the Boy Scouts of America’s reorganization plan but rejected other provisions, saying in a recent ruling that the organization has ‘decisions to make.’ One part Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein refused to approve was $250 million coming from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to help settle claims alleging child sexual abuse by Scout leaders.
USAA must face a potential class action suit accusing the carrier of failing to pay the full actual cash value (ACV) of totaled vehicles, a federal judge in Mississippi has ruled.
There is a hole in the dam. Prior to June 14, every one of the 77 federal and 44 state court appellate decisions interpreting the meaning of ‘direct physical loss or damage’ in a standard-form commercial property insurance policy had ruled against the policyholder.
