Greedy Trial Lawyer
Aiding And Abetting Insurance Bad Faith
Category: Torts For Our Time
Plaintiff used the little known theory of Aiding and Abetting to win a bad faith insurance case against an employer. In a case that highlighted a disturbing trend of companies using incentive programs to minimize on-the-job injury reports, a South Dakota man recently won $5 million in a bad faith claim against his employer construction company. The plaintiff claimed that a supervisor, spurred on by company policies and cash incentives, actively tried to get the insurance company to fight paying Ron Hubbard's workers' compensation claims for surgeries related to carpel tunnel syndrome. After a six-day trial, jurors ordered Hills Materials and its parent company, Oldcastle Materials, to pay Ron Hubbard $65,000 in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. If employers want to play outside the lines on worker injuries, Aiding and Abetting may be the great equalizer for injured employees. Thank you, South Dakota.
From the Legal-Ledger.com article.
"This case examines the widespread practice of large construction companies providing cash incentives and bonuses to supervisors for underreporting injuries," said Michael Abourezk, who represented the plaintiff along with Alicia Garcia. "It's a very widespread practice all over the U.S. They're touted as safety programs, but what they really do is encourage people to minimize injuries to lower premiums and get bigger contracts for the construction companies."Using a little-used theory, Abourezk argued that the construction company "aided and abetted in the commission of a tort" when it tried to convince the insurance company to deny medical claims from Ron Hubbard. The attorneys stumbled upon the theory while doing research on bad faith claims.
"We've all heard of aiding and abetting in the criminal context, but I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't even know it existed in the civil context," said Abourezk. "It's not really an exotic theory, and it's recognized by the Restatement of Torts. I'm not sure why it isn't used more. It simply says that if a party gives substantial assistance or encouragement to another party in the commission of a tort, they can be held liable for the tort."
In this instance, Abourezk and Garcia wanted to hold the construction company and not the insurance company, which had settled earlier, responsible for preventing their client from collecting benefits for a work-related injury.
"In this case we had an employer that vigorously got involved with calls to the insurance company asking them to deny the claims in the workers' compensation case," he said. "They even hired a lawyer to get the insurance company to deny the claim, and they offered to let their attorney represent the insurance company in the case. Basically they wanted their own hand-picked hit man."
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