Insurance Coverage / Bad Faith

• After settling a case against the drunk driver and her employers when a Tahoe ran over a married couple while they were riding their bicycles to dinner in South Padre, HMH filed a new lawsuit, in federal court in Colorado, for bad faith insurance practices against the couple’s underinsured insurance company. After ten months of hard-fought litigation, State Farm agreed to pay well in excess of the full insurance limits. This let the couple begin to move on with their lives and get the closure they so desperately needed.
• Shortly before its insured, an oil and gas company in the Permian Basin, began a trial where it was being sued for the negligence of one of its employees, the company’s excess insurance carrier denied coverage for the excess policy issued for the oil and gas company. After losing at trial, and finding itself without sufficient insurance to cover the multi-million dollar verdict, the oil and gas company hired HMH. HMH filed suit against the excess insurance company. The court agreed with HMH’s briefing and arguments, finding coverage and ordering the excess insurance company to indemnify HMH’s client. After additional briefing and evidence was submitted by HMH, the court ordered the excess insurance company to pay HMH’s client $177,353 “as compensation for its reasonable attorney fees necessarily incurred in bringing and prosecuting its claim . . . .”