Court Opinion

ID: 9594618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:31:27.089261+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:23.975009
License: Public Domain

BURNETT, Judge,
dissenting in part.
I join the Court in upholding judgment for the Howards on their claim for benefits under the Blue Cross contract. However, I respectfully disagree with the Court’s dis-allowance of attorney fees on appeal and its reversal of the attorney fee awards made below.
*492The Court acknowledges that its ruling on attorney fees is contrary to the allowance of fees by our Supreme Court in Linn v. North Idaho District Medical Service Bureau, Inc., 102 Idaho 679, 638 P.2d 876 (1981). The Court does not — indeed, cannot — distinguish Linn. Rather, the Court sidesteps Linn, observing simply that the Supreme Court did not consider the problem of statutory interpretation discussed today. The question, simply put, is whether Blue Cross and similar organizations should be subject to I.C. § 41-1839, which authorizes awards of attorney fees against insurance companies.
This question does not yield a single, clear answer. Although a strong technical argument can be made that Blue Cross is not an insurance company, an equally strong commonsense argument can be made to the contrary. These conflicting viewpoints are portrayed in Weber v. Blue Cross of Montana, 196 Mont. 454, 643 P.2d 198 (1982), a case in which a virtually identical issue produced a sharply divided Montana Supreme Court. Because reasonable people may entertain differing views on this question, I would not presume to disregard what our own Supreme Court has done in Linn.
Moreover, even if Blue Cross is a professional service corporation rather than an insurance company, it is subject to Idaho’s Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act. See I.C. § 41-3434(9). The Act, at I.C. § 41-1329, enumerates various unfair claims settlement practices, including “[cjompelling insureds to institute litigation to recover amounts due under an insurance policy by offering substantially less than the amounts ultimately recovered in actions brought by such insureds____” That, in essence, is what Blue Cross has done here. It refused the Howards’ claims and forced them to litigate. Concededly, our Supreme Court has held that the Act does not create private causes of action. White v. Uniguard Mutual Insurance Co., 112 Idaho 94, 730 P.2d 1014 (1986). But the Act, and the statute explicitly making it applicable to medical service corporations, still may be treated as an expression of legislative intent that companies like Blue Cross should bear the cost, including attorney fees, of lawsuits successfully brought by subscribers to recover the benefits to which they are entitled.