(Inside Florida.org)
An alternative to trying both claims together may be to bifurcate the coverage claim from the bad-faith claim for trial. Taking that approach would result in trial of the coverage claim first, and the bad faith claim would be tried only after the coverage claim was resolved.
That is what the court did with an Underinsured Motorist Claim and a Bad Faith Claim in Tanner v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., No. 3:19-cv-00253-SLG, 2020 WL 406676 (D. Alaska January 24, 2020). The Court in that case declined to stay bad-faith discovery. Tanner, 2020 WL 406676, at *5.
Bifurcation, abatement, and dismissal in first-party insurance cases are discussed including the Tanner v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. case, along with many other defenses to bad faith that practitioners do not necessarily encounter every day, in 2 Dennis J. Wall, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH § 11:24 (3d Edition Thomson Reuters and 2020 Supplements).
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