You hit it right on the head. It would have been nice/appropriate for the article to go into exactly what the Claims Department/Adjuster did that was wrong and exactly what behaviour resulted in the punitive award. There is a lesson in their, but they didn’t dwell on that part. Bringing that to the public’s attention may avert another Claim Adjuster/Department from making the same mistake. —-> Tell me more specifics!!!
This thread is very frustrating and has outlined a staple of the comments on this site…personal responsibility.
There are a wealth of people that make comments on this site about personal res. for individuals, but seem not to care when companies do not demonstrate the same. This case has absolutely nothing to do with the pers. respons. of the drunk driver of the car. Of course, he is 100% at fault for the injuries sustained by the victim / plaintiff. That is not in dispute. The problem is that instead of offering a limits settlement, the insurance company decided to play a little game by hoping that under some extraordinary circumstances, they wouldn’t have to pay the limits. They acted in bad faith as it was apparent the limits settlement was appropriate. They did not demonstrate the PERSONAL RESPONSBILITY they should have in being the insurer on the account.
This is not to say that if there is some dispute about coverages that the insurance company does not have every right to challenge. Say, a dispute about whether the policy was in force, or whether there was an exclusion that applied, etc. then Princeton should have challenged. But as this is not the case, they rolled the dice and lost at the expense of virtually all involved.
As a side note, I think many of you are confused about the purpose of punitive damages. Punitive damages are intended to punish / deter the individual or company from doing this practice in the future. That is why you will see heavy penalties. Punitive damages do not necesarily need to be somehow monetarily commensurate with the infraction. They are designed to send a message. If you were personally involved in a case and were penalized 10,000, that might make you think twice before you did it again. However, when dealing with a company, the penalty has to be much higher or it is simply a cost of doing business. The intent is that the next time this happens to Princeton, they will do the right thing and make the offer, and that’s why it is so high. Hopefully, next time they will.
i understand what ur saying there, but my whole idea is the questioning why the bar itself it taking the blame when in reality, it was the owner of the bar whom served himself the drinks whom had the accident. that wud be like me having a drink at my local park with a keg and got myself drunk. then turn to the park or the keg delivery folks and get their money to cover the claim. it might sound far fetch, but in reality that is basically what we are doing. we forget that it truly is the individual is responsible and not the companies. it goes back to the responsibility of the individual whom is smoking. i smoke and if i get cancer i can just sue the manufacturer. even tho, i know that i can cause health problems. reality check on this one and this is a major sticking point for me: the recipe for the actual cigarette was a guarded secret between the u.s. government and the mfg folks. when it went to court, only the mfg folks were sued. yet, out government denied to have anything to do with it. yet, they knew, that it was a potential hazard. if i owned a cigarette plant now, i wud be advertising just like normal; sponsoring cars, tv ads and the sort. society as a whole, has learned that it is easy to blame everyone else, but ourselves. no personal responsibility and then let companies pay the big bills. yes, there will be occasions where the big guns will be at fault. but is it really more of them at fault or the individual? another reason why we have frivilous lawsuits. if you had read another article about a judge/lawyer whom had sued a dry cleaner for $75 million for a lost set of pants, it was lowered to $54 million and then the appeal judge threw that out as well; society today is so hung up on $$$ they forget the moral value. when is enough – enough?
excuse me!!! BAD FAITH because the insure left them exposed? let’s look at that picture again: 1) in the auto industry, don’t we do that all the time, when we sell a policy a minimum limits knowing full well, that any could have better coverage. if that is the case, where’s the car insurance and what payout did they have? where was the proper coverage for that? um…wud u say they had bad faith as well? i think that bad faith is just something we tend to overlook when it comes to auto insurance…so how much cvg did his auto insurance carry? why do they not have bad faith cvg? if an owner serves himself, is the bar actually responsible for the cvg under his liability? i think, we forget — society nowadays is $$$$ hungry; and yet, it shud not be because the $$$ is going to the lawyers – whom are the real $$$ mongers…
According to the plaintiff’s attorney, Robert Mongeluzzi of Saltz Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesk, Princeton Insurance Co. has agreed to the $20 million in mediation of a bad faith claim filed in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
Princeton did not admit liability in the settlement, Mongeluzzi said.
The $20 million is in addition to the $1 million Princeton was previously required to pay under the limits on the tavern’s $1 million insurance policy after it lost its appeals on the dram shop case.
A jury awarded Tuski, who was 31 at the time of the crash, $75 million, an award that a judge later cut in half. But that large award was never paid because the tavern had only $1 million in insurance.
The tavern assigned its rights to Tuski, who sued Princeton Insurance Co. for bad faith, charging that the insurer failed to negotiate a settlement within the policy’s $1 million limits after the verdict.
**************
let’s look at this again, and maybe we can get the full account of the incident in question…first of all, there is no inidication of this article that the owner of the bar was the driver of the vehicle…secondly, if you look, bad faith call is bad call!!! reason – the bar owner, wanted to assume that his claim could have been settled for under the $1 million claim. In fact the jury awarded $75 whereas the judge cut that in 1/2…so the insurance was not in bad faith because it would have paid the $1 mil…bad faith _ is in bad judgement of the drunk driver and the owner of the bar, whom really did not have enough coverage for the settlement. this is why we are so fussy as a society, we are looking for money, in this case, the owner collects $20 mil + $1 mil (how much a lawyer can get) and the remaining balance will go to the quadrapalegic and then probably the owner still has to come up with the difference pending how much is paid by the car insurance…so it was not bad faith of the insurance company because it can only settle for $1 mil…the award was for $75 mil initially — so therefore the owner is in bad faith thinking that all claims can be resolved under an amount…that is like me having a claim where as my bi limit is only 25k and yet the person i hit has 50k of bills…the remaining 25k is out of my personal pocket…same with the bar owner…
BAD FAITH — NO WAY!!
BAD JUDGEMENT — YES WAY on behalf of the jury for the amount of the settlement since there probably was not enough assets by the owner or the bar itself….
Now, wait, I believe coverage should be denied, since the insured is the plaintif in this case.(unbelieable) Shouldn’t coverage be excluded since we can’t sue ourselves? Hummmm, does Princeton make it a practice to deny ligtimate claims? I believe a jury should look at claims paying history before punitive damages are awarded. I wish I was the defense attorney in this case. I understand why Princeton withheld payment or didn’t offer a settlement. apeal, apeal, apeal
you lack an understanding of what bad faith is despite it being fairly well articulated in these posts. Many insurance companies rely on folks just like you to do their dirtywork by deciding on information other than what is presented at trial.
I’m impressed! This board is usually so pro-insurance that its posters most always side with insurance companies regardless of actions they take. But that doesn’t seem to be the case as of late. A few of you actually seem frustrated to hear that companies you work for and respect put their own interests ahead of customer’s interests at claim time. This PA case is just another example.
I hear the stories and see honest hard-working consumers who have been victimized by insurance company claims adjusters nearly everyday. After an auto accident many of them get steered into network direct repair shops against their will by careless use of crafty word tracks and bogus guarantees. Once a car is at the DRP it often gets butchered with aftermarket parts that fit poorly and unnecessarily compromise the safety of occupants in a subsequent crash. Quality of workmanship is in the toilet, but the DRP’s CSI is so manipulated that the poor consumer never finds out until it’s too late. Completed, repaired cars on average are devalued to the tune of about 30% of their retail values. But, collecting for diminished value is out of the question insurers tell them, unless, of course, they want to go further in the hole by paying an attorney to represent them in a case that will be hard-fought by the insurer.
It’s been my experience that insurance companies size up the ability of the claimant to buy a defense. If they find them affluent or influential they get paid everything they request and more (Dickie Scruggs excluded). If they are not financially secure, they get lied to, chased in circles, and eventually worn down to the point they will accept any amount to get a settlement behind them.
What’s worse, is the push by insurers to limit judgments in torts and bad faith cases. Convincingly, insurance companies bully the states with threats of pulling out if insurance climates are not made more favorable. When they get their way and tort reform is passed and bad-faith limits capped, unethical companies have no fear of adverse judgments that could harm them, and they push the boundaries more than ever.
Kudos to those of you who see through the smoke screens put up by advertising agencies and spin wizards in the home offices. And to those of you who put your jobs in jeopardy to get consumers all they are entitled to receive at claim time, I applaud you.
Treating others the way you would have others treat you is the right thing to do. A bonus is that every once in a while you might save 20Mil on a claim.
David Williams / OH
Auto Repair and Valuation Expert
Some of us out there are sick and tired that the pendulum has swung too far. The arroagance of the companies and abuses of policy holders has gotten out of hand.
Its time for some checks and balances.
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You hit it right on the head. It would have been nice/appropriate for the article to go into exactly what the Claims Department/Adjuster did that was wrong and exactly what behaviour resulted in the punitive award. There is a lesson in their, but they didn’t dwell on that part. Bringing that to the public’s attention may avert another Claim Adjuster/Department from making the same mistake. —-> Tell me more specifics!!!
This thread is very frustrating and has outlined a staple of the comments on this site…personal responsibility.
There are a wealth of people that make comments on this site about personal res. for individuals, but seem not to care when companies do not demonstrate the same. This case has absolutely nothing to do with the pers. respons. of the drunk driver of the car. Of course, he is 100% at fault for the injuries sustained by the victim / plaintiff. That is not in dispute. The problem is that instead of offering a limits settlement, the insurance company decided to play a little game by hoping that under some extraordinary circumstances, they wouldn’t have to pay the limits. They acted in bad faith as it was apparent the limits settlement was appropriate. They did not demonstrate the PERSONAL RESPONSBILITY they should have in being the insurer on the account.
This is not to say that if there is some dispute about coverages that the insurance company does not have every right to challenge. Say, a dispute about whether the policy was in force, or whether there was an exclusion that applied, etc. then Princeton should have challenged. But as this is not the case, they rolled the dice and lost at the expense of virtually all involved.
As a side note, I think many of you are confused about the purpose of punitive damages. Punitive damages are intended to punish / deter the individual or company from doing this practice in the future. That is why you will see heavy penalties. Punitive damages do not necesarily need to be somehow monetarily commensurate with the infraction. They are designed to send a message. If you were personally involved in a case and were penalized 10,000, that might make you think twice before you did it again. However, when dealing with a company, the penalty has to be much higher or it is simply a cost of doing business. The intent is that the next time this happens to Princeton, they will do the right thing and make the offer, and that’s why it is so high. Hopefully, next time they will.
i understand what ur saying there, but my whole idea is the questioning why the bar itself it taking the blame when in reality, it was the owner of the bar whom served himself the drinks whom had the accident. that wud be like me having a drink at my local park with a keg and got myself drunk. then turn to the park or the keg delivery folks and get their money to cover the claim. it might sound far fetch, but in reality that is basically what we are doing. we forget that it truly is the individual is responsible and not the companies. it goes back to the responsibility of the individual whom is smoking. i smoke and if i get cancer i can just sue the manufacturer. even tho, i know that i can cause health problems. reality check on this one and this is a major sticking point for me: the recipe for the actual cigarette was a guarded secret between the u.s. government and the mfg folks. when it went to court, only the mfg folks were sued. yet, out government denied to have anything to do with it. yet, they knew, that it was a potential hazard. if i owned a cigarette plant now, i wud be advertising just like normal; sponsoring cars, tv ads and the sort. society as a whole, has learned that it is easy to blame everyone else, but ourselves. no personal responsibility and then let companies pay the big bills. yes, there will be occasions where the big guns will be at fault. but is it really more of them at fault or the individual? another reason why we have frivilous lawsuits. if you had read another article about a judge/lawyer whom had sued a dry cleaner for $75 million for a lost set of pants, it was lowered to $54 million and then the appeal judge threw that out as well; society today is so hung up on $$$ they forget the moral value. when is enough – enough?
excuse me!!! BAD FAITH because the insure left them exposed? let’s look at that picture again: 1) in the auto industry, don’t we do that all the time, when we sell a policy a minimum limits knowing full well, that any could have better coverage. if that is the case, where’s the car insurance and what payout did they have? where was the proper coverage for that? um…wud u say they had bad faith as well? i think that bad faith is just something we tend to overlook when it comes to auto insurance…so how much cvg did his auto insurance carry? why do they not have bad faith cvg? if an owner serves himself, is the bar actually responsible for the cvg under his liability? i think, we forget — society nowadays is $$$$ hungry; and yet, it shud not be because the $$$ is going to the lawyers – whom are the real $$$ mongers…
wudchuch….the read the previous post again, then read it again. It is very clear what bad faith is. Just read the post again till you understand it……
According to the plaintiff’s attorney, Robert Mongeluzzi of Saltz Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesk, Princeton Insurance Co. has agreed to the $20 million in mediation of a bad faith claim filed in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
Princeton did not admit liability in the settlement, Mongeluzzi said.
The $20 million is in addition to the $1 million Princeton was previously required to pay under the limits on the tavern’s $1 million insurance policy after it lost its appeals on the dram shop case.
A jury awarded Tuski, who was 31 at the time of the crash, $75 million, an award that a judge later cut in half. But that large award was never paid because the tavern had only $1 million in insurance.
The tavern assigned its rights to Tuski, who sued Princeton Insurance Co. for bad faith, charging that the insurer failed to negotiate a settlement within the policy’s $1 million limits after the verdict.
**************
let’s look at this again, and maybe we can get the full account of the incident in question…first of all, there is no inidication of this article that the owner of the bar was the driver of the vehicle…secondly, if you look, bad faith call is bad call!!! reason – the bar owner, wanted to assume that his claim could have been settled for under the $1 million claim. In fact the jury awarded $75 whereas the judge cut that in 1/2…so the insurance was not in bad faith because it would have paid the $1 mil…bad faith _ is in bad judgement of the drunk driver and the owner of the bar, whom really did not have enough coverage for the settlement. this is why we are so fussy as a society, we are looking for money, in this case, the owner collects $20 mil + $1 mil (how much a lawyer can get) and the remaining balance will go to the quadrapalegic and then probably the owner still has to come up with the difference pending how much is paid by the car insurance…so it was not bad faith of the insurance company because it can only settle for $1 mil…the award was for $75 mil initially — so therefore the owner is in bad faith thinking that all claims can be resolved under an amount…that is like me having a claim where as my bi limit is only 25k and yet the person i hit has 50k of bills…the remaining 25k is out of my personal pocket…same with the bar owner…
BAD FAITH — NO WAY!!
BAD JUDGEMENT — YES WAY on behalf of the jury for the amount of the settlement since there probably was not enough assets by the owner or the bar itself….
Now, wait, I believe coverage should be denied, since the insured is the plaintif in this case.(unbelieable) Shouldn’t coverage be excluded since we can’t sue ourselves? Hummmm, does Princeton make it a practice to deny ligtimate claims? I believe a jury should look at claims paying history before punitive damages are awarded. I wish I was the defense attorney in this case. I understand why Princeton withheld payment or didn’t offer a settlement. apeal, apeal, apeal
Wudchuck,
you lack an understanding of what bad faith is despite it being fairly well articulated in these posts. Many insurance companies rely on folks just like you to do their dirtywork by deciding on information other than what is presented at trial.
I’m impressed! This board is usually so pro-insurance that its posters most always side with insurance companies regardless of actions they take. But that doesn’t seem to be the case as of late. A few of you actually seem frustrated to hear that companies you work for and respect put their own interests ahead of customer’s interests at claim time. This PA case is just another example.
I hear the stories and see honest hard-working consumers who have been victimized by insurance company claims adjusters nearly everyday. After an auto accident many of them get steered into network direct repair shops against their will by careless use of crafty word tracks and bogus guarantees. Once a car is at the DRP it often gets butchered with aftermarket parts that fit poorly and unnecessarily compromise the safety of occupants in a subsequent crash. Quality of workmanship is in the toilet, but the DRP’s CSI is so manipulated that the poor consumer never finds out until it’s too late. Completed, repaired cars on average are devalued to the tune of about 30% of their retail values. But, collecting for diminished value is out of the question insurers tell them, unless, of course, they want to go further in the hole by paying an attorney to represent them in a case that will be hard-fought by the insurer.
It’s been my experience that insurance companies size up the ability of the claimant to buy a defense. If they find them affluent or influential they get paid everything they request and more (Dickie Scruggs excluded). If they are not financially secure, they get lied to, chased in circles, and eventually worn down to the point they will accept any amount to get a settlement behind them.
What’s worse, is the push by insurers to limit judgments in torts and bad faith cases. Convincingly, insurance companies bully the states with threats of pulling out if insurance climates are not made more favorable. When they get their way and tort reform is passed and bad-faith limits capped, unethical companies have no fear of adverse judgments that could harm them, and they push the boundaries more than ever.
Kudos to those of you who see through the smoke screens put up by advertising agencies and spin wizards in the home offices. And to those of you who put your jobs in jeopardy to get consumers all they are entitled to receive at claim time, I applaud you.
Treating others the way you would have others treat you is the right thing to do. A bonus is that every once in a while you might save 20Mil on a claim.
David Williams / OH
Auto Repair and Valuation Expert
David,
Some of us out there are sick and tired that the pendulum has swung too far. The arroagance of the companies and abuses of policy holders has gotten out of hand.
Its time for some checks and balances.