Daily Archive for May 7th, 2021

Western District Judge Horan previously dismissed breach of contract and bad faith claims in this case, with leave to amend. A copy of our earlier summary can be found here. The insured cured the defects in its contract claim, but once again failed to set out a plausible bad faith claim. This time, however, Judge Horan dismissed the bad faith claim with prejudice, as any future attempt to amend would be futile.

The claim centered on a dispute over actual cash value losses for damaged equipment, and documents the insurer requested as part of an examination under oath (EUO). The insured failed to produce those documents, deeming them irrelevant, and the insurer would not proceed without those documents.

The complaint pleads that the carrier’s actual cash value calculation was fundamentally flawed, and that the carrier sought documents for the EUO that had nothing to do with coverage.

Judge Horan carefully reviewed the second amended complaint, finding plaintiff still failed to state a statutory bad faith claim for the same reasons set forth in her original March 4, 2021 opinion. Rather than overcoming the bad faith claim’s flaws, the new allegations in the second amended complaint “regarding Defendants’ pre-litigation investigation and document requests further buttress[ed] the Court’s prior decision.”

Judge Horan states:

“Defendants undertook an investigation upon the initial loss of the [damaged equipment] and made an offer. [The insured] rejected that offer and made its own claim of value for payment. … In response, Defendants continued the investigation by seeking documents and an examination under oath, as permitted by the Policy. Such conduct is not bad faith.”

Further, in once again rejecting the insured’s complaint over the document requests’ relevance, Judge Horan reiterates that “[e]xpecting an insurer to both investigate claims placed at issue by the insured and to do so only in a manner that is acceptable to the insured, is untenable.”

“Finally, as to the remaining allegations, they speak to a general disagreement over Defendants’ estimate of … damages. The Second Amended Complaint continues to support that an offer was made and that further effort at investigation was attempted by Defendants. These allegations of valuation and investigation disagreements do not support that Defendants engaged in bad faith.”

Date of Decision: April 30, 2021

Integral Scrap & Recycling, Inc. v. Conifer Holdings, Inc., U.S. District Court Western District of Pennsylvania No. 2:20-CV-00871-MJH, 2021 WL 1720713 (W.D. Pa. Apr. 30, 2021) (Horan, J.)