COMPLAINT ALLEGES SUFFICIENTLY DETAILED CHRONOLOGY OF FACTS TO SUPPORT PLAUSIBLE BAD FAITH CLAIM (Middle District)
The UIM plaintiff brought breach of contract and statutory bad faith claims. The insurer moved to dismiss the bad faith claim.
The complaint sets out 28 paragraphs with factual allegations. In his decision, Magistrate Judge Carlson recites 15 of those paragraphs verbatim, along with one lengthy paragraph including a litany of conclusory bad faith allegations.
In addressing the motion on the merits, Magistrate Judge Carlson describes the means to measure the adequacy of a complaint’s factual allegations in determining whether a plaintiff makes out a plausible claim:
In practice, consideration of the legal sufficiency of a complaint entails a three-step analysis: “First, the court must ‘tak[e] note of the elements a plaintiff must plead to state a claim.’ … Second, the court should identify allegations that, ‘because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth.’ … Finally, ‘where there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement for relief.’”
Assessing the complaint requires examining “the specificity of the pleadings and calls for recital of specific factual allegations from which bad faith may be inferred in order to defeat a motion to dismiss.” “Where a complaint’s § 8371 bad faith claim simply relies upon breach of contract allegations, coupled with a conclusory assertion that the failure to pay under an insurance policy was ‘unreasonable’ or made in bad faith, courts have dismissed such claims, but typically have afforded litigants an opportunity to further amend and articulate their bad faith claims.” On the other hand, “when a complaint couples general allegations of bad faith with well-pleaded assertions of unreasonable delay, unreasonable claims processing, and failures to communicate, a complaint adequately states a claim under § 8371 and is not subject to dismissal on the pleadings alone.”
In this “somewhat close case,” while one paragraph simply included a litany of conclusory bad faith allegations, “the complaint, taken as a whole, goes beyond a mere boilerplate recital of the elements of the statute.” It provides a chronology detailing the insurer’s alleged “failure to honor this underinsured motorist claim….”
“First, the plaintiff alleges that: “On countless occasions since Plaintiff[’]s underinsured motorist claim has been established, Plaintiff provided … medical records and reports concerning her injuries, condition, treatment, prognosis and recommended treatment plan.” “According to [the insured], this ‘documentation provided to [the insurer] clearly establishes Plaintiff continues to suffer from severe injuries, including but not limited to, complex regional pain syndrome.’”
The insured describes “months of indifference, delay, and failure to investigate … stating that: On June 27, 2019, a formal written demand for available policy limit was mailed to [the insurer]. On July 18, 2019, a [carrier] representative … confirmed via telephone he had received the aforementioned demand package. On September 6, 2019, [that representative] admitted he had not reviewed the demand package, but would make a formal settlement offer by September 17, 2019. On November 5, 2019, [plaintiff’s counsel] provided [that representative] with notice of our arbitrator (as is customary with automobile insurance policies in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) and requested [the insurer] provide notice of their arbitrator. [Plaintiff’s counsel] followed-up via certified letter dated November 12, 2019 which was received by [the insurer] on November 18, 2019.”
The insured adds “this course of conduct continued for many months, until February of 2020 when [the insurer] made an offer which … ‘does not fairly compensate Plaintiff for the injuries she has sustained’ and ‘has forced her to file litigation pursuant to the policy, in an effort to further delay payment of underinsured motorist benefits under the policy to which Plaintiff is rightly owed.’”
Magistrate Judge Carlson concludes, “these averments, while spare, go beyond the type of mere boilerplate allegations that courts have found to be too conclusory to sustain a bad faith claim.” “Moreover, fairly construed, the complaint alleges failures … to communicate and timely investigate this claim, coupled with allegations of unreasonable delay in claims processing and payment…. Such allegations as a matter of law are sufficient to state a bad faith claim under Pennsylvania law.”
Dates of Decision: July 27, 2020 (Report and Recommendation) and September 11, 2020 (Order adopting Report and Recommendation)
