February 18, 2007

Does a Court's (Reversed) Disparagement of the Policyholder's Coverage Claim Alone Eviscerate Its Bad-Faith Claim?

A common enough scenario in a liability-insurance case: the parties file cross-motions for summary judgment, with the insurer arguing it has no duty to defend. In Acme United Corp. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co. (7th Cir. Jan. 9, 2007), the question presented was whether an advertising injury liability insurance policy provided coverage for a suit against the insured for product disparagement. In Acme, the district court accepted the argument of the insurer, thus cutting off the ability of the policyholder to obtain recovery of the defense costs it had run up. Where, as here, the appellate court reverses and finds coverage, does the district court's now-reversed ruling effectively impale the policyholder's bad-faith claim?

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February 10, 2007

Insurers' Duty to Defend their Insureds Against Intentional Torts

The duty to defend undertaken by an insurance company is an essential component of the “peace of mind” coverage provided by liability insurance protection. Given the breadth with which the duty to defend is ordinarily construed by the courts, the defense-cost coverage of a policy is also referred to as “litigation insurance,” that is, insurance against the risk and burden of suits brought against the insured. Disputes have raged over whether that litigation insurance applies, however, to suits against the insured alleging an – or only – intentional tort.

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Posted by Marc Mayerson at 11:52 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 21, 2007

Cone of Silence or Echo Chamber: A Policyholder’s Privileged Communications and its Insurers

An insurance company that receives a claim from one of its policyholders inevitably wears both a white hat and a black one. The insurer is there to help its insured deal with the claim – it may dispatch claims handlers or service providers to help the policyholder in its time of need; the insurer, however, also is the insured’s adversary in the sense that it must determine whether it has any obligation to pay the insured. To the latter extent, the insured and the insurer have directly adverse interests. (The law of first-party insurance bad faith is predicated on the recognition in part of this fundamental adversity of interests between the insurer and its insured, especially at the precise moment when the insured is calling upon the insurer for performance.)

The insurer’s wearing two hats poses the opportunity for mischief when those roles get confused or blurred. Take the example of a defense lawyer hired by an insurance company to defend the insured: the defense attorney plainly has an attorney-client relationship with the insured, the touchstone of which is confidentiality. Assume that the defense lawyer is told a fact by the insured that supports the insurer’s denying coverage: the insured confesses to being drunk while driving, the insured acknowledges that it knew of a latent problem before it purchased the policy, or the insured knew of the potential claim against it for a long time but had simply hoped it would go away and so did not notify the insurer sooner. The insurance company might wish to learn of this fact because it might permit it to terminate its defense obligation and avoid paying anything on the claim. In these circumstances, may the defense counsel tell the insurance company about this admission from the insured?

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Posted by Marc Mayerson at 04:08 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

December 26, 2006

‘Round and ‘Round the Tort Liability Goes – When It Stops, Whither the Insurance Chose?

Generally, the law allows “choses in action” to be alienated (sold). This is a change that has been adopted over the course of the last 100 years or more. See W.W. Cook, The Alienability of Choses in Action, 29 Harv. L. Rev. 816 (1916). Because claims under insurance contracts properly viewed are choses in action, (Black’s Law Dictionary (5th ed. 1979) at 219), most courts have allowed insurance claims to be sold, too, even when the transaction takes the form of an “assignment.”

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Posted by Marc Mayerson at 06:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)