Source: https://insuranceclaimsbadfaith.typepad.com/insurance_claims_badfaith/evidence/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 12:44:24+00:00

Document:
"THE PARTIES ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THIS AGREEMENT" CANNOT BE REVIEWED, JUDGE.
It is not consistent with the Rules of Civil Procedure.
Whoever wrote the Stipulated Protective Order followed many earlier stipulated protective orders of the same ilk in many different kinds of cases. They wrote that whenever certain information is designated "confidential," it can be used in that lawsuit so no party has an incentive to seek judicial review.
Upon the conclusion of the case, under this stipulation the designated material must either be destroyed or "returned" to the party whose lawyers designated the information as "confidential."
The Rules of Civil Procedure require a showing of "good cause" to get a protective order in the first place. The Stipulated Protective Order in this case does not require a showing of anything for information to be secret and "confidential." In particular, whoever wrote the Stipulated Protective Order did not mention the requirement of showing good cause.
To say again, the Stipulated Protective Order in this case is not unique. It follows many earlier stipulated protective orders filed in many different kinds of cases.
It does not follow the Rules of Civil Procedure.
Dennis Wall is the author of "Attorneys Decide, Judges Sign Off: Protecting and Sealing Concealed Evidence Including in Insurance Coverage and Bad Faith Cases" published in New Appleman on Insurance (©2017 by LexisNexis). He is currently at work on a book about agreed protective orders and how they take our money, foreclose on our homes, and change our lives.
SPECIAL ENROLLMENT PERIODS FOR MEDICARE/HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE.
Victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria can catch a break courtesy of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS is inputting special enrollment periods for many Medicare beneficiaries and certain other persons who are trying to enroll in health plans offered through the Federal Health Insurance Exchange. If you or someone you know is eligible for a special enrollment period, individuals and families disrupted by the hurricanes have the opportunity to change Medicare plans, change prescription drug plans offered through Medicare, and apply for healthcare coverage. The special enrollment periods are offered in addition to the regular enrollment periods which begin November 1, 2017 for those who are eligible. Check out the CMS website for more information and for applications.
SOMETIMES, BAD FAITH CLAIMS COME UNDER OTHER NAMES.
In Lowrey v. Oregon Mut. Ins. Co., No. 2:17-cv-00831-RSL, 2017 WL 3769424 (W.D. Wash. Order Dated August 22, 2017, Filed August 29, 2017), the Court signed a Stipulated Protective Order that will make it easier to conceal evidence and keep any future settlement a secret. So secret that the Stipulated Protective Order does not say what kind of case this is, or even what the parties have alleged.
Here is what this case is about. Here is what the parties have alleged, so far. The Stipulated Protective Order intentionally or otherwise does not even hint at these things.
The plaintiff filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in May, 2017. Her complaint was based on the defendant's refusal to hire her because she changed her gender from male to female.
The plaintiff alleged that she changed her gender after some 20 years of handling insurance claims including supervising others in the handling of insurance claims. She alleged that after she told the defendant's interviewers that she, the plaintiff, had changed her gender, the defendant essentially discriminated against her when the defendant interviewed her for an open claims-adjuster position but refused to hire her.
Apparently, one of the defendant's stated reasons for refusing to hire her as a claims adjuster was that she did not have the experience that the defendant was looking for in a claims adjuster.
Oregon Mutual Insurance Company filed its answer on June 30, 2017. It carefully denied most of the plaintiff's allegations by reference to each numbered paragraph of the complaint. It further listed 13 paragraphs of affirmative defenses also essentially denying the plaintiff's allegations. Id., DE 7, Answer of Oregon Mutual Insurance Co., Filed June 30, 2017.
The case has been set for Trial beginning on December 3, 2018. It is expected to last 5 days. Id., DE 10, Order Entered July 18, 2017.
What a lot of things the Stipulated Protective Order does not mention. Many things will be mentioned here about this case, however, as this case proceeds through discovery. Everything revealed here will be what becomes publicly available from the Court file. With this article, we have already begun.
WHEN Does A PRIMARY CARRIER HAVE "UNCLEAN HANDS" IN SUBROGATION?
In a case rich with issues and holdings, Judge Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was faced with an excess carrier which raised "the equitable 'unclean hands' doctrine" as a bar to a primary carrier's principal defense in a subrogation case. The excess carrier claimed subrogation rights against the primary carrier allegedly by effectively asserting rights against its own insured, which cannot be done in subrogation (known as "the antisubrogation rule").
So, the excess carrier pointed out that subrogation is an equitable remedy and if the primary carrier had "unclean hands," then the primary carrier should not be allowed to raise the antisubrogation rule in equity.
...American Guarantee argues that ACE is barred from asserting the antisubrogation rule because ACE acted inequitably in the state-court litigation. (Citation omitted.) Here, American Guarantee argues that ACE, which controlled the defense of Wager Contracting in the state-court lawsuit, authorized a legal strategy focused on minimizing ACE's losses and shifting liability to American Guarantee rather than on defending Wager Contracting against all claims.
American Guarantee has failed to establish (or even raise a genuine dispute of material fact) that the unclean hands doctrine bars ACE from asserting the antisubrogation rule. The undisputed evidence shows that the counsel retained by ACE to defend Wager Contracting conscientiously acted in Wager Contracting's best interest in the underlying litigation. At bottom, then, American Guarantee's argument is that it was inequitable not to prioritize American Guarantee's interests in the case. But the mere fact that Wager Contracting's interests did not align with American Guarantee's does not even begin to suggest the type of bad-faith misconduct needed to make out a defense of unclean hands.
Ace Am. Ins. Co. v. American Guar. Liab. Ins. Co., ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, No. 16 Civ 8773 (JSR), 2017 WL 2840286, at *9 (S.D.N.Y. July 2, 2017) (emphasis added by boldface and italics; underlining by Judge Rakoff in original).
End result: There is at least a slim possibility, in theory, that the equitable defense of "unclean hands" is available in an equitable subrogation action between an excess carrier and a primary carrier. The reality will mostly trump the theory in this instance, as this case shows.
AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW .... SHHH!
Ms. Linda Thompson's Chevy Cobalt caught fire parked in her carport. Reasoning that the event spoke for itself, she sued and relied on res ipsa loquitur to prove her case. She (or the party subrogated to her rights) sued General Motors contending that it would be a jury case. However, a U.S. District Judge granted GM's motion for summary judgment instead.
"The Court finds," the District Judge said, "that Plaintiff has not satisfied her burden of maintaining application of res ipsa loquitur in this case because the record evidence does not sufficiently eliminate other plausible causes of the fire. While Plaintiff focuses on the portion of the Fire Marshal Report which indicates that the 'area of origin was determined to be at or near the engine compartment of the loss,' it ignores the following finding: 'The cause of the fire is being classified as "undetermined" with the inability to rule out accidental causes.' Moreover, Plaintiff's own experts opined: 'Without knowing the full maintenance or repair history of the vehicle, we cannot address the possible relationship with respect to any work performed on the vehicle and the source of the fire's ignition.'"
Centauri Specialty Ins. Co. v. General Motors, LLC, No. 16-226-SDD-RLB, 2017 WL 1015311, at *5 (M.D. La. March 15, 2017) (emphasis by the District Court).
Later this year the author's forthcoming book on secrecy orders and concealing evidence in federal courts will address the General Motors alleged ignition defect litigation involving Chevy Cobalts.
In a new decision, one of Florida's district courts of appeal understandably exonerated a liability carrier from causing an excess judgment, where the record displayed that the carrier did not act in bad faith and, even if it had, there was insufficient evidence that the carrier's conduct caused the excess judgment.
The record in this case shows that GEICO did not fail to meet any deadlines or other requirements established by the estate, as a requirement for settling the claim and avoiding the filing of a lawsuit against its insured. Also, where the insured's own actions or inactions result, at least in part, in an excess judgment, the insurer cannot be liable for bad faith.
GEICO General Ins. Co. v. Harvey, No. 4D15–4724, 2017 WL 33659, at *5 (Fla. 4th DCA January 4, 2017) (emphasis by the Court; opinion released with this NOTICE: THIS OPINION HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION IN THE PERMANENT LAW REPORTS. UNTIL RELEASED, IT IS SUBJECT TO REVISION OR WITHDRAWAL).
Whether this once again becomes the law of Florida, or anywhere else, remains to be seen.
NEW RULING IN FLORIDA ON BAD FAITH IN LITIGATION CONDUCT.
GEICO believes that Plaintiffs may attempt to offer evidence that GEICO acted in bad faith in the present action, specifically in the handling of discovery. GEICO argues that the contentious discovery disputes in this case are irrelevant to a determination of whether GEICO acted in bad faith in the handling of Anderson's claim. The Court agrees and grants GEICO's motion on this issue.
Gonzalez v. GEICO General Ins. Co., No. 8:15-cv-240-T-30TBM, 2016 WL 7157551, at *4 (M.D. Fla. December 8, 2016).
Appearances can be deceiving, however. See whether this in-limine ruling fits within decided Florida and national case law analyzed at length in 2 Dennis J. Wall, Litigation and Prevention of Insurer Bad Faith § 9:6 (3d ed. Thomson Reuters West, with 2016 Supplements).
"DEBT-BUYING INDUSTRY, LAX COURT REVIEW BURYING PEOPLE IN DEFAULTS".
Copyright Maxx-Studio; Image by Shutterstock.
This is the title of an ABA Journal article, except that I substituted the word, "people," in place of the word, "defendants," by Terry Carter (posted online on November 1, 2015).
The article's main point is that debt buyers clearly seem to follow an established business model (disputed by debt buyers), in which they buy the debts of people, meaning that they can then file collection suits to recover the alleged debts, and more. Debt buyers file robo-signed affidavits in large numbers with exhibits as "evidence" of the debt which in many cases is not owed by the people being sued.
Although they should not ignore these complaints, people often do ignore them, whether because the collection suits are filed in small claims courts (which they often are) and the consequences of not responding to them correspondingly seem small, or because the people who allegedly defaulted on a debt never asked for the loan, or the people do not recognize the name of the plaintiff suing them because they have never heard of it.
For whatever reason, people do not respond when they are sued in such matters -- something which the debt buyers allegedly count on as a part of their business model. When the people do respond with a lawyer, either the debt buyers dismiss their lawsuits right away (frequently) or the people represented by lawyers win on the merits (also fairly frequent when people are represented by counsel in these lawsuits, according to the ABA Journal article). According to statistics presented in the article, fewer than 2% of the people sued in these cases are represented by a lawyer, however.
When as happens in the vast majority of these cases the people do not respond, the debt-buying-plaintiffs request that the clerks enter default judgments, all without a judge ever seeing the complaint or the "affidavit" or its exhibits. Statistics in the article reflect that over 99% of judgments in such cases were entered without a trial.
"A clerk simply processed the creditor's claim based on a document stating little more than this person owes us this much, and the fact that she was served with the suit, then entering judgment after it went unchallenged." Terry Carter, ABA Journal, supra.
At this stage of the business process, the people who are sued really are debtors now: Judgment debtors. The next step in the process is that the judgment creditors -- the debt buyers -- execute upon the judgments and seize and sell the judgment debtors' assets to satisfy the judgments.
The debt-buying industry has understandably taken advantage of this and put an unprecedented burden on the nation's courts--state venues, usually small claims or others of nonrecord jurisdiction.
There is precedent for the burden placed on the nation's courts by a business model involving the calculated use of "robo-signed affidavits," however: The foreclosure crisis. In Florida, for example, the Courts were nearly overwhelmed with foreclosure suits. One way in which the Florida Supreme Court dealt with the explosion of foreclosure suits was to institute special Mediation Foreclosure procedures. The new mediation requirements in foreclosure cases have played a part in lowering the numbers of foreclosure filings, but foreclosure litigation is still a burden on the Florida Courts. Nationally, predatory lending practices of mortgage lenders and their servicers included lender force-placed insurance practices and foreclosure lawsuits based on robosigned affidavits.
By definition, such affidavits are signed robotically and are not made on personal knowledge. Robosigned affidavits accordingly contain the testimony of witnesses who do not have a clue about the truth or falsity of what they are swearing and affirming to be true. These and other similar business practices brought about a so-called National Mortgage Settlement. Neither the national settlement nor the settlements in individual cases have stopped the lenders' alleged predatory practices. See "SETTLEMENTS HAVE NOT STOPPED LENDER FORCE-PLACED INSURANCE PRACTICES OR LAWSUITS," posted on Insurance Claims and Issues Blog on Monday, December 14, 2015.
A solution in some States, such as in California, has been to enact legislation to address the debt-buyers' business model and litigation practices. Other States, such as New York, have enacted new Rules of Court to deal with the same issues. However, as is noted in the ABA Journal article, clerks of Courts are still so overwhelmed that no-one can confirm compliance with the new laws or with the new rules, as the case may be.
Until the clerks get their heads above water and their desks above paper filings, something can be done to further justice and slow the cause of injustice in the interim. Clerks can refuse to enter defaults; they can refer the cases to judges. Judges for their part can and must refuse to enter judgments which are not based on admissible evidence. Anything less and the clerks and the Courts will continue to complain about being overwhelmed, and as in the case of their cousins the mortgage lenders and mortgage servicers filing foreclosure lawsuits, the plaintiffs who file debt collection cases will demand that the judicial system now take steps to "streamline" dockets and reduce obstacles such as evidence, in order to accommodate the massive and overwhelming numbers of collection lawsuits which these debt-buying-plaintiffs file.
Or else they will overwhelm the system, they will say.
Please Read The Disclaimer. ©2015 by Dennis J. Wall, author of "Lender Force-Placed Insurance Practices" (American Bar Association 2015). The National Mortgage Settlement and the shameful practice of "robosignings," among other practices, are addressed in § 4.3 in particular. All rights reserved.

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