How we turned a Defendant’s $100,000 Insurance Policy into a $750,000 Recovery
A large portion of our practice involves litigating cases for plaintiffs that have been referred to us by other law firms. Once a case gets to us, we often find that a defendant’s insurance company has already made critical errors in defending the case. Those errors cannot remain unchecked.
Case in point- we recently obtained for a client a $750,000.00 settlement that was seven and a half times the defendant’s policy limits and seventeen times our client’s special damages. The case involved two defendants and contained unique and complicated issues. Because of these issues, one defendant accepted only 50% fault, while the other accepted no fault at all.
After filing suit and commencing discovery, we determined that the defendant disclaiming all fault was likely more correct that not. We focused the remainder of the case on the defendant that refused to accept more than 50% fault and by the time we were through developing evidence in the case, there were a few points that were overwhelmingly apparent: the defendant’s acceptance of only 50% fault was foolish, our client’s total damages far exceeded the limits of the defendant’s policy, and the insurance company’s failure to tender the limits of that policy was a grave error.
Absent the insurance company’s errors, our client’s recovery would have been limited to the available insurance coverage. While that would have been substantial and would have been more than twice his special damages, it would not have realized the full value of the harm done to him. Because we fully developed the case and forced the insurer to acknowledge not only the harm their insured had done, but also the gravity of their own errors, we were able to secure an excellent result for our client.