... DEFENDANT LIABILITY CARRIER LOSES SUMMARY JUDGMENT MOTION, AGAIN.
It is not necessarily the fault of any particular liability carrier, including the one whose motion for summary judgment on a claim of alleged bad-faith-in-settlement was denied once again, in Lemoine v. GEICO Indemnity Co., No. 14-80694-CIV-ZLOCH, 2016 WL 4240044 (S.D. Fla. February 18, 2016).
One particular issue involved in the case was the carrier's alleged failure to advise the insured of settlement offers and opportunities. The District Judge called this "the necessity of settlement offer disclosures."
The liability carrier candidly admitted in the bad-faith case that there was no evidence that it had communicated some settlement offers during the underlying case in which its insured was sued. Failure to advise the insured of settlement offers, if true, is however only one fact in the totality of the circumstances approach taken under Florida law to claims that liability carriers acted in bad faith during settlement negotiations of the underlying claim that the insured was facing.
"This is one factor among many, but the cases also indicate that the weighing of factors and evaluation of an insurance company's entire treatment of a claim is not a question of law, but one of fact, normally reserved for the jury." Lemoine v. GEICO Indemnity Co., No. 14-80694-CIV-ZLOCH, 2016 WL 4240044, at *5 (S.D. Fla. February 18, 2016). The Court accordingly denied the carrier's motion for summary judgment on the bad faith claim.
Well, you can't stop a guy from trying they used to say. And it must be hard for people not familiar with Florida law to understand that bad faith is determined under the totality of the circumstances, meaning of course the totality of the facts. Now, they probably say, you can't stop a company from trying, again.
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