Litigation and Prevention of Insurer Bad Faith.

• Author: Cone, Perry Ian

Litigation and Prevention of Insurer Bad Faith

By Dennis Wall

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Insurer "bad faith" is a hot topic in Florida. It is fertile ground for policyholder insurer attorneys, an area of serious concern for insurer counsel, and the subject of much debate within the business community. Opposing forces have battled it out in the legislature the last two years.

Hot off the presses is Dennis Wall's third edition of Litigation and Prevention of Insurer Bad Faith. Wall's comprehensive treatise covers the waterfront in two volumes. It is the quintessential A-to-Z guide, a resource for both Florida and the entire U.S.

Wall's vast collection of cases and secondary resources provides a wide array of food for thought on the intricacies of bad faith. It should be especially helpful to attorneys pushing the envelope, on the cutting edge, or seeking to create new law, and an equally valuable resource for insurer attorneys seeking to shore up their defenses or advising their clients on the prevention of bad faith.

The meat and potatoes of Litigation and Prevention of Insurer Bad Faith is its detailed and distinct treatments of third-party claims and first-party bad claims. In Part II, Third-Party Claims, Wall first covers insurers' standards of conduct with familiar topics such as settlement, refusal to defend, and conduct of defense. Adequate shelf space is next given to the responsibilities of the insured and to an insurer's defenses to bad faith claims. The foregoing summary does not do justice to the treatise's depth and detail. For example, the topic of third-party settlement is separated into 50 different sub-topics.

In many respects and in Florida in particular, first-party bad faith is a very different animal from third party bad faith. These differences are reflected in Wall's treatment of...