We handle quite a bit of insurance coverage litigation on behalf of the policyholder or assignees of the policyholder, which might be a homeowner’s association or another property owner. The claims may involve coverage under the policy but also bad faith actions by the insurance carrier. The laws in the state of Washington are robust in prohibiting bad faith conduct by insurance carriers. A typical case we handled is one on behalf of a condominium association in Oregon and in that case we won a judgement against a siding company in a construction defect case at the trial level but the insurance carrier for the sider refused to pay even though the damage was squarely within the language of the policy.

The carrier refused to pay and so we went to trial against the insurance carrier and obtained a judgement against the insurance carrier for failure to provide coverage. In other words, they had to pay the judgement against their insured, the sider. They appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals. We prevailed int eh Oregon Court of Appeals. They appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court and we prevailed in the Oregon Supreme Court in an important decision involving policyholder rights under a commercial general liability