11th Circuit upholds $2.9M bad faith verdict against Geico
The appellate panel said the evidence was 'more than enough for a jury to find that Geico acted in bad faith' in its handling of a 2010 auto wreck.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a trial court in ruling that Geico General Insurance was not entitled to a new trial after a Florida jury found it engaged in bad faith, leaving the insurer on the hook for a $2.9 million judgment.
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The insurer had argued there was insufficient evidence to support a jury’s finding, but the July 20 per curiam opinion authored by Judges Gerald Tjoflat, Charles Wilson and Kevin Newsom said the plaintiff’s injuries were likely well over the $250,000 policy limits following a 2010 auto accident but that it still refused to tender its policy limits until it was hit with a lawsuit.
“Here, the evidence presented was more than enough for a jury to find that Geico acted in bad faith,” the unpublished opinion said.
Possible violations of Geico’s internal policies
The judges also said the trial court did not err by admitting evidence concerning possible violations of Geico’s internal policies and its conduct of settlement discussions after its ultimate policy-limit tender was rejected.
As detailed in the order and court filings, Margaret Randall was severely injured in a wreck with Melissa Servold in Key West on Oct. 27, 2010, and was airlifted to the Ryder Trauma Center in Miami-Dade County with a severe brain injury.
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Servoid was covered under a Geico policy issued to her mother, Beverly Allen, with limits of $250,000 per person and $500,000 per incident.
Geico was notified almost immediately, and within two days a representative had left a phone messages for Randall and her husband, Thomas Bannon. A Geico field adjuster went to the hospital the next week and knew that Randall was still in the intensive care unit.
By that time, according to the complaint Randall and Bannon would later file against Geico, “the medical and ambulance bills alone were likely far in excess of Geico’s policy limits.”
Geico refused to tender policy limits
Nonetheless, Geico refused to tender its policy limits, and on Nov. 19, 2010, the couple sued Servold and Allen in Monroe County Circuit Court.
Geico tendered its $250,000 limit three days later to the plaintiffs lawyers Michael Olin and Ian Osur of Miami’s Michael S. Olin P.A., who rejected the offer the next day. Osur has since left the firm.
The case was litigated over the course of several years, during which the plaintiffs made several settlement offers to the defendants and Geico, all of which were rejected.
It was only when the trial was set to begin in 2015 that Geico allowed Allen and Servold to enter into a consent judgment for $2.95 million, under which they assigned their right to pursue a bad faith claim to the plaintiffs.
Insurer’s recalcitrance
Bannon and Randall sued Geico in Florida District Court in 2015, arguing that the insurer’s recalcitrance had caused them to “spend tens of thousands of dollars and incur almost five years of delay in pursuing a claim that should have been settled promptly after the crash occurred or at numerous opportunities during the progression of the underlying lawsuit.”
Geico’s refusal to negotiate multiple settlement offers also exposed its own insureds to potential “financial ruin,” the complaint said.
During a trial in 2016 before Judge Kathleen Williams, the parties stipulated that the damages were to be those agreed to in the 2015 consent judgment, and the only issue was whether Geico acted in bad faith.
On Dec. 8, 2016, the jury said “yes,” and Williams entered a judgment for $2,950,000 — less the $250,000 Geico already tendered—plus $212,227 in prejudgment interest.
Geico requested a new trial
Geico moved for a new trial and for judgment as a matter of law, arguing among other things that evidence concerning its conduct after the 2010 tender was prejudicial.
“Notwithstanding the fact Florida law has made clear that an insurer has no duty to negotiate or agree to a settlement proposal or consent judgment in excess of its policy limits,” the motion said, “the extensive argument and testimony elicited on the subject … inevitably led the jurors to believe that Geico failed to conform to its duties Florida law.”
Williams denied the insurer’s motions in 2017, writing that her jury instructions had “alleviated any prejudice caused by the improper introduction of evidence or argument on this issue.”
Williams similarly turned aside Geico’s arguments that its claims manuals should have been excluded from evidence along with a plaintiffs’ expert’s testimony that Geico owed them a “duty of good faith” under Florida law.
Strong evidence
In upholding Williams, the appeals panel said the evidence strongly supported the conclusion that Geico knew shortly after the accident that Servold was entirely at fault and that Randall had been in a coma.
“A reasonable jury could have concluded that by Nov. 5 (2010) the cost of the medical expenses and non-economic damages merited a tender of the $250,000 policy limits,” the opinion said.
As to Geico’s other arguments, “the district court made clear in its jury instructions that Geico’s policies and procedures could not alone constitute bad faith and were only one factor in the analyses under Florida law,” the judges said.
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