Court Opinion

ID: 9628868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:33:23.721788+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:12.651828
License: Public Domain

HASELTON, J.,
concurring.
This is a primal scream concurrence: Under PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, our construction of ORS 742.061 is “correct” — and, indeed, inevitable. But in the real world — the world in which insureds and insurers live — that construction defies common sense and sanctions unconscionable results. In the real world, we are wrong.
The upshot of our analysis, 153 Or App at 154-56, is that unscrupulous insurers can bleed their insureds dry by *158engaging in litigation wars of attrition — and then, by tendering eleventh-hour settlements to those few who are so tenacious or foolhardy to sustain the fight, avoid any liability for attorney fees under ORS 742.061. Indeed, so long as an insurer offers a sufficient tender anytime before the jury actually returns its verdict, it can avoid any obligation to pay fees. The potential for abuse is manifest.
That result guts the statute:
“The purpose of [the statute] was to discourage expensive and lengthy litigation. Oftentimes insurance companies have contested their obligation to pay a loss with such persistence and vigor that the benefit of an insurance policy is either largely diminished or entirely lost. It is not the intention of the writer to question the good faith of insurance companies. They have all the rights other citizens have to defend when haled into court. That the contest of insurance losses on doubtful and technical defenses has often caused distress and unnecessary loss to the insurance beneficiaries cannot be denied. For that reason and in the same spirit that a contract for the payment of attorneys’ fees in a promissory note is upheld when the maker refuses to pay, insurance companies are required to pay reasonable attorneys’ fees, where they have wrongfully defended an action to recover or refused to pay the loss within a reasonable time.” Dolan v. Continental Casualty Co., 133 Or 252, 255, 289 P 1057 (1930).
The Supreme Court has consistently reiterated that purpose. See, e.g., Chalmers v. Oregon Auto Ins. Co., 263 Or 449, 452, 502 P2d 378 (1972) (“The purpose of [former] ORS 743.114 allowing recovery of attorney fees by claimants under insurance policies is to encourage the settlement of such claims without litigation and to reimburse successful plaintiffs reasonably for moneys expended for attorney fees in suits to enforce insurance contracts.”).
For all of that, the statute says what it says — and the lead opinion’s textual analysis is unassailable. The remedy, if any, lies not in judicial ingenuity, but in legislative amendment. See generally Schwegert v. Beneficial Life Ins. Co., 204 Or 294, 305-06, 282 P2d 621 (1955).