The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals' decision is officially not for publication in West's Federal Reporter, in Barnard v. GEICO General Insurance Co., 2011 WL 6115690 (11th Cir. December 9, 2011) STATED "NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN WEST'S FEDERAL REPORTER," Download Barnard v. GEICO General Insurance Co. (11th Cir. Case No. 11.12851, STATED DO NOT PUBLISH Opinion Filed December 9, 2011) PUBLIC ACCESS. However, the Eleventh Circuit panel's decision to affirm the District Court's granting of the Insurance Company's Motion for Summary Judgment is based on a record that evidences the outcome with no genuine issue of material fact. The District Court held that the Insurance Company could not have settled the underlying claim in Good Faith and the Appellate Court affirmed.
The officially unpublished Federal Appellate decision reports that GEICO attempted to "follow up" with the Plaintiff's lawyer to attempt to settle this Third-Party Claim "on at least sixteen occasions via telephone, fax, mail, and in-person visits." Id. at *1.
This Federal Appellate decision may not provide any binding legal precedent. The factual record of this case may provide a different story. The record reported by the Federal Appellate Court reflects that there is no way on these facts that the Insurance Company "could have" settled this Third-Party Claim even if, 'under all the facts, it should have done so,' to paraphrase the Florida Standard Jury Instruction. In short, the record displayed in this reported litigation shows why the facts of this case just could not meet the Bad Faith standards applied by Juries in alleged Bad Faith Failure-to-Settle cases in Florida.
This is what documentation looks like: Good Faith which can be proven.
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