A hotly contested issue in all bad faith cases is the proper scope of discovery that a policyholder may obtain. As I discussed in Florida Southern District Court Upholds Condominium Association’s Right To Bad Faith Discovery:

For condominium associations in particular, many times attorneys become involved in an insurance claim from the very beginning. In many instances, the independent or insurance adjuster is moved to the side early in the process and replaced by the insurer’s attorney, who ends up directing the adjustment and making the final determination of coverage.

For many years, insurers have claimed that all of the work that these attorneys performed in the adjustment of the claim was privileged because of the work product and attorney-client privilege. When insurers acted in bad faith by denying valid claims, the insurer could refuse to produce relevant documents which reflected this improper behavior during the bad faith litigation.

Fortunately, Florida courts caught on to this tactic and have stopped the insurer’s attempts to improperly hide its bad faith conduct by invoking attorney-client and work product privilege on materials in the claim file.

The Florida Supreme Court’s ruling in Allstate Indemnity Co. v. Ruiz, 899 So. 2d 1121 (Fla. 2005) set the precedent in preventing insurer’s from concealing bad faith activities with claims of privilege. Specifically, Ruiz overruled previous case law and found that work product documents created in the breach of contract action were part of the claim file and must be turned over in subsequent bad faith litigation.

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Continue Reading Florida Supreme Court Clarifies Attorney-Client Privilege In Bad Faith Cases