on January 17, 2017
Policyholders and their insurers can often take on several roles over the course of their relationship. This is especially true once litigation begins. In Evanston Ins. Co. v. House. Auth. Of Somerset, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals discussed how to determine whether policyholders and their insurers are truly adverse for the purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction....
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on April 21, 2016
It is established Ohio law that an insurer may not rely on the attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine in withholding documents and other information from their claims file showing a lack of good faith in settling a claim or denying coverage. Moskovitz v. Mt. Sinai Med. Ctr., 69 Ohio St.3d 638, 1994 Ohio 324, 635 N.E.2d 331 (1994); Boone v. Vanliner Ins. Co., 91 Ohio St.3d 209, 2001 Ohio 27, 744 N.E.2d 154 (2001); Squire, Sanders, 127 Ohio St.3d 161, 2010-Ohio-4469, 937 N.E.2d 533, at P 31. Beginning with the Ohio Supreme Court's decision in Moskovitz, and further clarified and expanded in the Court's decisions in Boone and Squire, Sanders, this important principle of discovery in the insurance context acts to provide insureds with information essential to their claims of bad faith—information they could not receive otherwise. The reasoning that holds these cases together is this: when an insurer and its attorney act in bad faith, their communications and any related documents are unworthy of protected status. Boone at 213. Some insurers, however, have questioned whether an insurer may avoid the production of its communications when the communications are located in an in-house attorney's files instead of the file of the assigned claims adjuster....
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