... Maybe "Not Such a Good Thing After All."
Defense lawyers are certainly not alone when "educating the Trial Judge" becomes a factor during the course of filing their motions and briefs. Sometimes at least some Policyholder or Plaintiff lawyers may have the same motivation during the course of filing their motions and briefs as well.
Such seems to have been among the motivating factors at work on the face of a judicial report concerning the Court's disposition of one of the approximately eight (8) Motions in Limine, from Plaintiff and Defendant collectively, in the First-Party Bad Faith Case of Download Altheim v. GEICO General Ins. Co. (M.D. Fla. Order Filed April 14, 2011) PUBLIC ACCESS, also published as 2011 WL 1429735 (M.D. Fla. April 14, 2011)(authorized password required to access Westlaw).
The Plaintiff, Ms. Bethany Altheim, was issued an Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Policy by GEICO. Ms. Altheim got into an automobile accident with one Ms. Meredith Tucker. Ms. Altheim demanded the $10,000.00 UM/UIM Policy Limit, and later demanded $1,000.00 less. GEICO refused both UM/UIM demands. Ms. Altheim then sued GEICO in Florida State Court and recovered a $750,000.00 Judgment against GEICO, "pursuant to a stipulation by the parties." Before a week had passed, she filed her First-Party Bad Faith lawsuit against GEICO. Altheim v. GEICO General Insurance Co., 2011 WL 1429735 at *1.
With that one-paragraph of context all that seems reasonably necessary to understand the attempted Motion in Limine in question, Ms. Altheim's lawyers filed what the Court in that case described as a "Motion to Exclude State of Mind Evidence". Id. at *2. GEICO opposed this motion on the grounds that the motion was in essence overly broad and vague. The Court agreed with GEICO in this regard.
In addition, the Court served notice in this case that it refused to be "educated" about Florida law which, parenthetically, provides grounds in at least some circumstances to argue for the relevance and admissibility of evidence on the issue of whether a case "could" have been settled by the insurer if evidence tends to show that the underlying claimant was not willing to settle (see previous posts here, for example, in the Categories of Bad Faith, Defenses in Insurer Bad Faith Actions, Evidence, and Settlement Demands and Offers). The Court in considering this particular Motion in Limine wrote this in its ruling:
The Court agrees that the motion [is] over-broad and is unclear as to what specific testimony Plaintiff is seeking to exclude. In addition, the Court is not prepared to agree at this time that state of mind testimony can only be elicited from expert witnesses or that Plaintiff's willingness to settle is speculative or irrelevant.
Id.
Postscript: The same or a similar issue arising in a different case and involving defense attorneys is explored in a post on Insurance Claims Bad Faith Law Blog on Tuesday, April 19, 2011.
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