“Bad faith.” If these words were uttered in a pleading in La., Miss., or any other Gulf state prior to the arrival of the now infamous 2004 Florida hurricanes—as well as the 2005 monsters, Katrina and Rita, in Miss. and La.—then the lawyer filing this rare claim in a lawsuit usually made sure he or she had an egregious set of facts to substantiate the claims in the lawsuit.

Further, regardless of how egregious the facts, a defense attorney would, in most cases, read the words “bad faith,” and promptly jump out of his or her chair, picking up the phone immediately to have a nice little conversation with the plaintiff's lawyer.

Unfortunately, the days of a rarity of bad faith allegations in a lawsuit vanished just as innocuously as the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes. Instead, these hurricanes popularized the words “bad faith” and empowered plaintiffs' lawyers, making bad faith allegations the “rule” in Gulf lawsuits more than the “exception.” So much so, in fact that a client recently asked me why a plaintiff's lawyer did not ask for bad faith damages in a first-party claim. Have we really reached a point where defendants are surprised when wrongdoing is not alleged in a first-party lawsuit? Are we now living in a “Commercial Claims Bizzaro World1” come true?

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