Insurance company's mistake results in significant bad faith claim
The plaintiff received 12 times the policy limit of the defendant's insurance coverage.
The team of trial attorneys from the Drury Law Firm and Benjamin Lucas P.A. says they have never seen a carrier pay the entire limit — $25,000 in this case — to a person who was not in the vehicle that took the hit.
But that seemed to be the “ace in the hole” for a resolution for their client, who got 12 times the policy limit, amid claims of bad faith.
“I’ve never seen that happen,” said Christopher M. Drury of Drury Law in Coral Gables.
Click here to read the complaint
‘Stick to your guns’
The lawsuit stemmed from litigation among Miami-Dade residents Katia Cambiaghis Achcar as the plaintiff, and Danilo Garcia Sanches and Yenifer Cati Rivero Esponda as defendants.
Attorneys said Sanches was driving Esponda’s car when he careened into Achacar’s car, which collided with the vehicle in front of Achacar, causing a chain reaction.
Achacar, who was severely injured, and the driver she was pushed into were hospitalized, the complaint read.
“The insurance carrier for the at-fault driver [Sanches] went ahead and paid the person who was driving the vehicle in front of my clients, but didn’t didn’t even bother to make an offer anywhere close to the limits for my client — and my client was the one that took the hit,” Drury said.
Drury said while in deposition, the driver at fault claimed his brakes failed.
Plaintiff counsel team’s research and follow-up brought them to the conclusion that their client was due justice, allegedly in light of no real liability defenses. They pursued claims of bad faith, after no satisfactory results to settle.
“The insurance company made a mistake, and they know ultimately because you’ve made it clear to them through the course of a case that they’ve made a mistake,” Drury said. “Stick to your guns…Get the value of the case for your client, and don’t settle for less.”
Co-counsel Benjamin Lucas agreed.
“This client was seriously injured, and I was shocked by the initial low settlement offer made to her,” Lucas said. “We knew this was a case we had to be prepared to go all the way on, and we pushed it as hard and fast as we could.”
Threat of bad faith
Defense attorney Miles A. McGrane IV, a partner at Conroy Simberg, did not return an email for comment on the settlement.
But a Miami insurance litigation expert not connected with this case offered his assessment from personal experience.
“That’s probably why the insurance company was worried about—being held in bad faith,” said attorney Michael Neimand, who has spent more than 20 years in insurance defense and appellate law, representing South Florida insurance companies.
Neimand, who has defended hundreds of cases like this, said the idea is to protect the insured from excess damages.
“And when you don’t, then the insurance company can become liable for the excess damages,” he said. ”If they go to a jury, there’s no telling how much they would be on the hook for, because realistically, in the situation where you have a chain reaction, the first person you hit is probably the most injured. With a third person in that situation, probably wasn’t that much injured.”
While Direct General Insurance Co. was not named as a defendant, it paid the settlement of $300,000—12 times the policy limit of the defendant’s insurance coverage.
Neimand suggested the insurer likely got a better deal with the settlement, versus trial.
“If the insurance company didn’t do anything for the middle driver, then they were on the hook for whatever damages they were going to find,” he said. “Bad Faith can go anywhere. There’s no limit. … It’s whatever the attorneys could prove, and then you’re also on the hook for attorney fees.”
Litigation strategy
Drury, the immediate past president of the Miami-Dade Trial Lawyers Association, specializes in personal injury and malpractice. He is no stranger to high-ticket wins.
In January the Drury-Lucas team secured $6.6 million settlement for a client in a Florida Keys accident involving an armored truck.
And in March jurors awarded $66 million to the attorneys’ client, a former football player who became paralyzed when a driver crashed into his motorcycle.
In the latest litigation, the attorneys divided the work.
“Ben’s office handled a lot of the written discovery, but I did the depositions and the negotiations and the proposal for settlement,” Drury said. “When Ben and I do cases together, we’re a team.”
Drury’s advice to other attorneys in similar case scenarios: Hold insurance companies to what the law allows — an extra-contractual settlement or judgment for the value of the case, as Florida’s bad-faith law allows.
“The best takeaway I can give to fellow lawyers is once you have the insurance company in a position where it is going to be an extra-contractual claim, they’re not going to be able to avoid bad-faith exposure,” Drury said. “Get the value of the case for your client. And don’t back down, because your client has one case, and you’ve got to get the top value for that client…That’s the only case that your client’s got for their life and they’ve got permanent injuries. And you’ve got to make it count.”
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