Farmers hit with $57.2M punitive damage award. (Farmers Group Inc.)

National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, October, 1993 by Haggerty, Alfred G.

Farmers Ins. Group said it will appeal a $57.2 million punitive damage award by an Orange County, Calif., judge who described the insurer's conduct in the handling of a patent infringement claim as "despicable, vile, malicious, fraudulent and oppressive." Superior Court Judge C. Robert Jameson said Truck Ins.

Exchange, a member of the Los Angeles-based Farmers Group, "clearly violated" the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing when it failed to defend Surgin Surgical Instrumentation against a patent infringement suit. Judge Jameson also took the unusual step of directing the plaintiff's attorney to send to Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi the ruling and any other supplemental information which would help him evaluate the insurer's conduct....

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.