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In United Farm Workers of America v. Hudson Insurance Company, (E.D. Cal.) 2019 WL 1517568, the United Farm Workers of America union (UFW) sued Hudson Insurance Company for breach of contract and bad faith arising out of a former employee’s wrongful termination and wage and hour lawsuit.Hudson provided UFW with Labor Professional Liability Insurance that included employment practices liability coverage. Hudson reserved its rights and agreed to pay an allocated share of the defense costs, citing

December 20th, 2018 In Case v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co., Inc. (No. B281732, filed 11/21/18, ord. pub. 12/18/18), a California appeals court held that the allowable reduction from uninsured motorist (UM) benefits for “payable” workers’ compensation benefits meant “eligible,” whether the insured sought the benefits or not. As a result, the court found that a genuine dispute over resolution of the insured’s workers’ compensation claim negated a claim for bad faith delay in payment

On January 24, 2019, the Appellate Division First Department dealt a blow to plaintiffs' attempts to hide their activities on social media. In the case of Vasquez-Santos v Matthew, 2019 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 527, the Court held that, "[private social media information can be discoverable to the extent it 'contradicts or conflicts with [a] plaintiff's alleged restrictions, disabilities, and losses, and other claims'"In Vasquez, the plaintiff, a semi-professional basketball player, alleged that the

In this case, a semi-truck owned by Joginder Singh was at fault for an accident which ultimately involved sixteen vehicles (one of which was a logging truck). In one of those vehicles, a nine-year-old passenger was killed. An adult named Brian Sykes was in another of the vehicles. The estate for the child that was killed filed a claim against the semi-truck company and the logging truck company. In January of 2013, Singh’s counsel asked Singh’s insurer to permit him to personally contribute $1,0

In PacifiCare Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Jones (No. G053914, filed 9/20/18), a California appeals court upheld the California Insurance Commissioner’s authority to impose a $173 million penalty on a health insurer based on a finding of multiple violations of the State’s Insurance Code and insurance regulations.In PacifiCare, the Insurance Commissioner, Dave Jones, imposed the fines after finding 900,000 violations of the Unfair Insurance Practices Act (Ins. Code §§ 790, et seq., “UIPA”). Insu