On the front page of today’s Texas Lawyer, reporter Mary Alice Robbins profiled our Texas Mutual Insurance Co. v. Narvaez case, which was recently reversed by the 5th Court in Dallas. The trial court had sanctioned Texas Mutual for altering a medical record, then using the doctored record at trial in the Narvaez matter.
Yesterday morning the Texas Supreme Court heard oral argument in Texas Mutual Insurance Co. v. Timothy Ruttiger. In this workers compensation bad faith case, Texas Mutual requests to be immune from liability for violations of the Texas Insurance Code and seeks to avoid any accountability before a court or jury for bad faith conduct on the part of its managers, supervisors and adjusters. In doing so, the state’s largest workers’ compensation insurance company asked the Texas Supreme Court to overturn many years of precedent recognizing the important legal obligation to handle claims in good faith and to abrogate the Texas Insurance Code.
On April 26th 2010, a Harris County District Judge heard a motion in an insurance bad faith case regarding Ace American Insurance’s refusal to provide its adjusters to testify regarding their actions in wrongfully denying claims.
A Harris County District judge has for a second time rejected Ace and Broadspire’s request to impose a gag order in order to keep adjuster testimony secret. Ace and Broadspire initially objected to the placement of excerpts of adjuster depositions on our firm’s Youtube site, and moved for what amounts to a gag order to block any public accountability for Ace’s or the Broadspire adjuster’s misconduct. Their request was denied, and depositions ordered to proceed. See our April 30 blog report on the first rejection of this request.
In 2008 and 2009, Old Republic, Gallagher Bassett, and their adjusters improperly denied a legitimate claim asserted by an injured worker related to a knee injury requiring surgical intervention.