The history of third-party bad faith claim decisions brought under state Unfair Claims Settlement Practices statutes consists of more than three decades' worth of roller coaster battles between plaintiffs and insurers. Some of those cases have been similar in that each time insurers seem to have "won the war," the battle resume in a new forum, or under a different law or court decision. Even in Calif. where The Crawford Risk Review declared the old witch's demise, I have found traces of her footprints on top of a few graves in the insurance company cemeteries.

In 1979, the California Supreme Court ruled that a third party was entitled to bring an action under the state's Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act (Cal. Ins. Code §790.03), and sue the insurer for a responsible insured for bad faith in the case of Royal Globe v. Superior Court (23 Cal.3d 880, 153 Cal. Rptr. 842, 592 P.2d 329). While the insurance company won the case overall, the decision opened the door to litigation from every third party who was dissatisfied with what an insured's insurer was doing, leaving insurers overwhelmed with both first- and third-party bad faith litigation under the code.