Court Opinion

ID: 9546915
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:37:56.27691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:01.926181
License: Public Domain

SUMMERS, Justice,
concurring specially.
In Christian1 we recognized the right of an insured to bring an action against its *438insurer for bad-faith failure to honor an insurance contract. In Roach2 we acknowledged that a named, third party beneficiary to an insurance contract had like recourse for bad-faith behavior on the company’s part. In 85 O.S.1981 § 65.3 the legislature decreed that employees covered by the Workers’ Compensation Act are third party beneficiaries of their employer’s workers’ compensation insurance contracts. Just as the geometrician knows that the shape of a triangle cannot be changed without altering the length of one or more of its sides, so too these three legal propositions interlock in such a way as to make the majority’s assumption unassailable. Only by our disturbing either Christian or Roach, or by the legislative alteration of § 65.3, can a different result logically be reached.

. Christian v. American Home Assurance, 577 P.2d 899 (Okla.1978).

. Roach v. Atlas Life Ins. Co., 769 P.2d 158 (Okla.1989).