Opinion ID: 1097684
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: trial defense

Text: Was Bankers Life entitled to rely on Dr. McParland's opinion? Bankers Life argues that Dr. McParland was a qualified and reputable doctor. Why should punitive damages be assessed when he testified disease alone caused the limb loss? Since there was a jury question on whether the accident had any causal relation to the amputation, based upon Dr. McParland's testimony, how can punitive damages be assessed? This ignores the conduct of Bankers Life prior to trial and the reason it gave Crenshaw and his attorney for denying the claim. Lemersal, the house counsel, even advised Herzau to inform Crenshaw's lawyer Bankers Life must have proof that an injury caused the loss directly and independently of all other causes. [7] Crenshaw could argue with some cogency Bankers Life should have been estopped to assert this variant defense for the first time at trial. Furthermore, the issue is not the defense which Bankers Life at trial finally settled upon to defend the suit, but the reason it gave Crenshaw for denying the claim. See: Aetna Life & Casualty Co., Inc. v. Lavoie, 470 So.2d 1060 (Ala. 1985) Moreover, it is not simply whether a jury question on liability is presented that is determinative, but whether Bankers Life knew the facts it asserted to make the jury issue were valid. Dr. McParland was not an independent physician in this case, but an employee and agent of Bankers Life. What he knew, or should have known, was imputed to Bankers Life. An insurance company faced with two separate and distinct medical theories, each of which is supported by reputable physicians, and one of which would exclude liability, probably should not have punitive damages assessed if it asserted in court the theory favorable to its position. This would be true even though a jury rejected the company's position in the trial on actual damages. It was not disinterested witnesses' particular version of the facts, or one medical theory arrived at by independent evaluation, which Bankers Life chose to rely on in this case. Instead, it was an opinion of its own employee on incomplete facts. This leaves us with the inquiry as to whether Dr. McParland was a witness or an advocate in his medical opinion. The jury was entitled to examine the bona fides of Dr. McParland's testimony, just as they were entitled to scrutinize the other manifestly strange behavior of Bankers Life we have set out. In any field of human endeavor judgments based on incomplete information are perilous. It is clear from this record that Dr. McParland both before and during trial freely expressed his opinion when he either did not have all the facts, or having them before him, chose to ignore those facts which either should or conceivably could have altered his opinion. Three reasons were stressed by Dr. McParland for his assertion trauma had nothing to do with Crenshaw's limb loss bear scrutiny.