JUNE 2017 BAD FAITH CASES: FINANCIAL ADVISOR RECOMMENDING INSURANCE PRODUCTS HAS NO FIDUCIARY DUTY TO CLIENT/INSURED ABSENT INSURED HAVING ACTUALLY OR FUNCTIONALLY CEDED ALL CONTROL IN DECISIONMAKING TO ADVISOR (Pennsylvania Supreme Court)
This case involves the existence of a fiduciary duty between financial advisor and his clients. The facts include recommendations to buy certain life insurance policies, which the insureds later claimed were fraudulently represented to them. They brought various claims, including breach of fiduciary duty claims.
Those claims were rejected by the trial court, which found no fiduciary duty existed in the absence of the financial advisor having control over the insureds’ decisionmaking. The Superior Court reversed, finding the existence of a fiduciary duty based on the facts concerning the relationship between the advisor and his clients, rather than as a matter of law. The Supreme Court reversed that decision. It ruled, along the lines of the trial court, that in the absence of a traditional type of controlling and overmastering relationship, there is no fiduciary duty simply because the financial advisor has greater expertise where the clients made the ultimate investment decisions.
Among other things, the Supreme Court stated:
“While cases involving fiduciary relationships are necessarily fact specific, they usually involve some special vulnerability in one person that creates a unique opportunity for another person to take advantage to their benefit.”
“The Superior Court, in the case before us, erred in relying on our case law involving undue influence to support its conclusion that a fiduciary relationship can be established without evidence that decision-making power was effectively ceded to another. Its view misses the point that the exercise of undue influence, at its core, indicates that an individual so influenced has lost the ability to make an independent decision.”
“We conclude that the … summary judgment evidentiary record falls far short of establishing a fiduciary …. Fiduciary duties do not arise ‘merely because one party relies on and pays for the specialized skill of the other party.’ …. If this were the law in Pennsylvania, ‘a fiduciary relationship could arise whenever one party had any marginal greater level of skill and expertise in a particular area than another party.”
“The superior knowledge or expertise of a party does not impose a fiduciary duty on that party or otherwise convert an arm’s-length transaction into a confidential relationship. In this regard, the analysis is no different in a consumer transaction than in other fiduciary duty cases decided by this Court.”
“’[T]he critical question is whether the relationship goes beyond mere reliance on superior skill, and into a relationship characterized by ‘overmastering influence’ on one side or ‘weakness, dependence, or trust, justifiably reposed’ on the other side,” which results in the effective ceding of control over decisionmaking by the party whose property is being taken.”
“A fiduciary duty may arise in the context of consumer transactions only if one party cedes decision-making control to the other party.” Thus, “’a business transaction may be the basis of a confidential relationship only if one party surrenders substantial control over some portion of his affairs to the other.’”
The case before the court did not fall into these categories. Rather, it presented “an arm’s-length consumer transaction in which the [clients/insureds] accepted [the financial advisor’s] advice with respect to the purchase of the … whole life insurance policy[, and they] made the decision to purchase this policy, but also decided to reject other proffered products and services.” The complicated nature of the premium structure did not change the character of the transaction between the parties. The clients “purchased an insurance product from a captive financial advisor with whom they had a business relationship for a little more than a year, initiated by a cold-call. [Their] lack of post-secondary high school educations is not indicative of a weakness, dependence, or trust, justifiably reposed, nor is [the advisor’s] advanced training sufficient to establish an overmastering influence.”
“The record here establishes that [they] made the decision to purchase Appellants’ advice and financial products. Reliance on another’s specialized skill or knowledge in making the purchase, without more, does not create a fiduciary relationship. We acknowledge that [they] may have become comfortable with the Appellants’ expertise before deciding to purchase the … whole life insurance policy, which is to be expected when making a financial decision. It is part of the development of any business relationship — consumer or otherwise. It does not, however, establish a fiduciary relationship.”
“There is no evidence to establish that [they] were overpowered, dominated or unduly influenced in their judgment….” “[They] never ceded any decision-making authority….” Over the course of the relationship, they followed some of his recommendations and rejected others. Prior to the proposal for the whole life policy at issue, Appellants proposed a different whole life product that [they] did not purchase.”
It was of some significance to the Court that under appropriate circumstances, consumers “have various common law tort remedies (with burdens of proof less stringent than those required in fiduciary duty cases), as well as claims for common law fraud and the statutory relief provided by the current version of the UTPCPL, which provides a remedy for deceptive conduct. 73 P.S. § 201-2(4)(xxi).”
The majority “decline[d] to modify the law of fiduciary duty to encompass the particular pitfalls involved in the sale of insurance products by commissioned agents or financial advisors to less savvy customers. Moreover, we do not hold that a fiduciary duty cannot arise in a case with facts not present here, but absent evidence that a consumer of financial services and goods cedes control over the decision to purchase, either explicitly or implicitly because of over-mastering or undue influence, no fiduciary relationship arises.”
