You might recall the 2011 legislation that took away consumers’ right to bring claims against insurance companies under the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act, but that same legislation seemed to recognize the existence of a common law cause of action for bad faith in Tennessee.  (click here for a prior post on that topic).  Since that time, I’ve been tracking a couple of bad faith cases working their way through the Tennessee appellate courts.  Today the Court of Appeals for the Western Section issued its ruling in one of those cases.  See U.S. Bank v. Tennessee Farmers Mutual Insurance Company.

The opinion itself was rather "ho-hum," and doesn’t offer much of any substantive discussion regarding common law bad faith claims, but it impliedly holds that such a cause of action exists.  The issue in the case was whether a mortgage company who is a named mortgagee on an insurance policy has a duty to notify the insurance company of a foreclosure on the insured property.  The Tennessee Supreme Court previously ruled that no such duty exists, but on remand one of the issues to be considered was the Bank’s common law bad faith claim.  After hearing proof on the issue, the trial court (Judge Clayburn Peeples) ruled that such a cause of action exists and expressly held that Tennessee Farmers Insurance Company acted in bad faith in denying the Bank’s claim for insurance proceeds.  In reviewing Judge Peeples’ decision, the Court of Appeals quoted his ruling at length, which stated in part:

US Bank has shown by a preponderance of the evidence the following elements of a claim for common law claim for a bad faith failure to pay:

a.That [Tennessee Farmers] issued a policy of insurance to US Bank and that US Bank made lawful, reasonable claim under that policy;

b. That [Tennessee Farmers] intentionally refused to pay US Bank’s claim;

c. That [Tennessee Farmers] had no reasonably legitimate or arguable reason for its refusal to pay the claim; 

d. That [Tennessee Farmers] had actual knowledge of the absence of a reasonably legitimate, debatable or arguable reason for the refusal; and

e. That [Tennessee Farmers] intentionally failed to determine whether it had a reasonably legitimate or arguable reason for refusing to pay US Bank’s claim.

In reviewing this holding by the trial court (which was a specific issue on appeal), the Court of Appeals seemingly accepted the elements of a bad faith claim as set forth by Judge Peeples, but then went on to hold that the facts before the Court did not amount to bad faith.  Its a rather odd opinion for such a big issue, but nonetheless is an extraordinary win for victims of insurance bad faith in Tennessee.  The door is now wide open for future common law bad faith claims.