Bad Faith Claim Disintegrates Into Mutual Walk-Away

“Bad faith” is all the rage these days at the insurance plaintiff’s bar, as plaintiff’s attorneys continue to seek out creative means of attempting to transform the most innocent of adjuster errors into an occasion for making six or seven figure claims, plus Brandt (Brandt v. Superior Court (1985) 37 Cal.3d 813 [210 Cal. Rptr. 211, 693 P.2d 796) attorney’s fees!

Straus Meyers, LLP, did not allow plaintiff to realize this strategy on this occasion. Straus Meyers, LLP successfully moved to strike three times successive amended complaints, each time removing punitive damages language, until the court granted its third and last motion to strike without leave to amend. Concurrently, while aggressively undertaking this and other motion work, Straus Meyers, LLP, continued to vigorously investigate the facts until it located, and then deposed, new witnesses, which until then had been elusive, and whose whereabouts plaintiff had conveniently failed to disclose. The testimony of these witnesses would eventually completely undermine the plaintiff’s attempts to portray the insurance company’s behavior in a bad light, and provided the necessary material for an Insurance Code Section 1871.7 counter-claim against plaintiff for insurance fraud, which, as trial approached, ultimately resulted in plaintiff dropping his earlier six-figure settlement demand to….zero.