OCTOBER 2018 BAD FAITH CASES: NO BAD FAITH WHERE CLAIM DENIAL SUPPORTED BY EXPERTS; POTENTIAL BAD FAITH FOR CLAIMS OF RETALIATION (New Jersey Federal)
In this case, the insured’s damage claim would be covered if damages were caused by a sinkhole. The insured and insurer used a number of experts or investigators, who reached opposite conclusions. The insurer’s “team” relied upon its two engineers who concluded there was no sinkhole, and rejected the insured’s expert in favor of its own experts’ conclusions.
The insured brought breach of contract and bad faith claims. There were two distinct bad faith claims. The first was based on the sinkhole denial. The second was based on the insurer’s alleged threat to seek reimbursement of a previous payment on an earlier claim in retaliation for pursuing the sinkhole claim. The court granted summary judgment on the former, but allowed this threat based action to proceed.
No Bad Faith Where Denial Supported By Experts Made Denial Fairly Debatable
The court denied the insurer’s summary judgment motion on coverage, finding a dispute of fact on whether the loss resulted from a sinkhole. However, the court did grant summary judgment on the bad faith claim for denying coverage.
Under New Jersey’s fairly debatable standard, the bad faith plaintiff must show “the insurer knowingly or recklessly lacked a reasonable basis to deny the claim.” “A bad faith claim must fail where the insurer’s denial of the claim was fairly debatable.” Thus, a “claimant who could not have established as a matter of law a right to summary judgment on [the breach of contract claim] would not be entitled to assert a claim for an insurer’s bad-faith refusal to pay the claim.”
In this case, the insurer relied upon two expert engineers to deny the claim. The court found that “[n]o facts have been put forth to show that these reports were wholly fraudulent, or were crafted without any investigation or expertise.” It cited Bello v. Merrimack Mut. Fire Ins. Co., for the proposition that the “’fairly debatable’ question was one for the jury, in circumstances “where the insurer relied on a report by a non-engineer that acknowledged the merit of the insured’s claim….” [In that case, the jury found bad faith].
The court concluded: “Examining the record in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, Defendant rubber-stamped the conclusions of [the insurer’s engineers] and ignored contrary evidence. But the fact that these two engineers arrived at conclusions consistent with Defendant’s decision to deny Plaintiffs’ claim demonstrates that that decision was fairly debatable. Summary judgment must therefore be granted in favor of Defendant on the Second Count.”
Bad Faith Claims Allowed To Proceed On Retaliation Threat Claim
The “insurer acts in bad faith when it acts without a reasonable basis, and when the insurer knows or is reckless in not knowing that its action lacks a reasonable basis.” In its second bad faith count, the insured alleged the carrier’s “decision to retroactively seek reimbursement was made in retaliation for Plaintiffs’ filing a new claim.” The insurer argued that it actually sought reimbursement because of a fraudulent misrepresentation, resulting in erroneous payment. The court found it lacked “sufficient information to rule on this Count as a matter of law,” and denied summary judgment.
Date of Decision: October 9, 2018
Orban v. Liberty Mutual Fire Ins. Co., U. S. District Court District of New Jersey Civ. No. 16-3050, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173212 (D.N.J. Oct. 9, 2018) (Thompson, J.)
Should the New Jersey Senate’s proposed Insurance Fair Conduct Act become law in the future, this could very likely change the standards discussed in this case.
