Court Opinion

ID: 9619566
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:29:44.164757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:42.441222
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
dissenting:
The first-impression question before the court is whether a claim for the insurer’s bad faith refusal to pay a fire loss is governed by a one-year limitation prescribed in 36 O.S.1981 § 4803(G) for actions on a fire insurance policy or by a two-year limitation period in 12 O.S.1981 § 95(3) which governs actions “for injury to the rights of another, not arising on contract ...” The court holds that the claim is ex delicto and hence § 4803 is inapplicable. I cannot accede to this view.
The claim before us was first fashioned in Christian v. American Home Assur. Co., Okl., 577 P.2d 899 [1978]. There, at 904, we adopted the California view, expressed in Gruenberg v. Aetna Insurance Company, 9 Cal.3d 566, 108 Cal.Rptr. 480, 484, 510 P.2d 1032, 1036 [1973], and characterized the bad-faith breach of an insurer’s duty to pay as sounding “ ‘in both contract and tort’ ”. [emphasis supplied]. The instant case clearly falls under the rubic of hybrid actions that lies somewhere in the gray area separating pure tort from classic contract cases. The class may be described as “torts arising out of contractual relationships”. General Motors Corporation v. Piskor, 281 Md. 627, 639, 381 A.2d 16, 22-23 [1977]. Claims of this genre exhibit characteristics of both tort and contract actions. A tort will be deemed to arise out of a contractual relationship if the delictual duty breached and the contract are so intertwined that one cannot be viewed in isolation from the other because the detriment sought to be vindicated arose directly from performance or nonperformance of the contract. General Motors Corporation v. Piskor, supra, 381 A.2d at 21, and Caruso v. Republic Insurance Company, 558 F.Supp. 430, 434-435 [D.C.Md. 1983].
The “tort” here consists of nothing more than a bad-faith nonperformance of a contract. What occasioned this litigation was a single, allegedly insured-against loss by fire. Whether its recovery now be sought as an insurer’s breach of policy provisions or as a bad-faith refusal to settle a claim, only one episode of breached duty is tendered for legal redress — the insurer’s nonpayment of a single loss. No matter how the pleader’s claim may be characterized, the insured cannot escape the fact that, save for the contract, there would be here no detriment legally to be redressed. As a theory of recovery, an insurer’s bad-faith refusal to pay must necessarily draw its viability from presupposed existence of an actionable breach of a valid policy obligation which has not gone stale but remains presently remediable. At the very core of insurer’s extracontractual liability lies mala fide nonperformance of an enforceable promise. Although our current remedies’ regime gives the insured a choice between two alternative theories of recovery — one founded on promise-generated liability and the other on insurer’s duty of good faith implied from his status or derived from public policy considerations— the latter theory may be invoked only as long as the contract claim still remains timely for judicial vindication. Nonpayment of a stale claim surely is not actionable as insurer’s bad-faith refusal to settle.
*71Once a cause of action to recover for loss by fire is barred by lapse of time, the breached duty to pay that loss becomes irremediable. The claim cannot be later resurrected or revived under the guise of a suit to enforce the insurer’s bad-faith failure to settle. Barrow Development Co. v. Fulton Insur. Co., 418 F.2d 316, 319 [9th Cir.1969] and Modern Carpet Industries, Inc. v. Factory Insurance Association, 125 Ga.App. 150, 186 S.E.2d 586, 587 [1971]; see also Skrupky v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co., 55 Wis.2d 636, 201 N.W.2d 49 [1972], Because under § 4803(G) the obligation in suit can no longer be enforced after one year from the “inception of the loss”, the bad-faith claim in contest before us was not timely brought. I would hence affirm the summary judgment for the insurer.
I am authorized to state that BARNES, C.J., and IRWIN, J., concur in this view.