Justia U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

This case involves a dispute between two insurance companies, Gemini and Zurich, over their respective contributions to a $2 million settlement arising from a fatal accident involving a tractor-trailer. FSR Trucking, the employer of the driver involved in the accident, was insured by Zurich for $1 million and by Gemini for $3 million. The settlement was paid with $2 million from Gemini and $1 million from Ryder’s insurer. The disagreement centers on how much each insurer should contribute to the $2 million paid by Gemini.The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida granted summary judgment in favor of Zurich, ruling that both insurance policies were "mutually repugnant" and thus required pro rata contribution. Zurich had already tendered $500,000, which the court deemed its pro rata share. The court also awarded Gemini prejudgment interest on the $500,000 from the date of the settlement payment to the date Zurich tendered its share. Gemini appealed, seeking an additional $500,000, while Zurich cross-appealed the award of prejudgment interest.The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reviewed the case de novo and reversed the district court's decision regarding the amount of contribution. The appellate court held that Gemini's policy was excess to Zurich's, based on the specific language in the "other insurance" clauses of both policies. Consequently, Zurich was required to pay an additional $500,000 to Gemini. The court affirmed the district court's award of prejudgment interest on the initial $500,000 and directed the lower court to award prejudgment interest on the additional $500,000 from the date of the settlement payment to the date of the amended final judgment. The case was remanded for entry of judgment consistent with these findings. View "Gemini Insurance Co. v. Zurich American Insurance Co." on Justia Law

A property-insurance dispute arose between a condominium association and its insurer after storms damaged the property. The association demanded an appraisal of the loss, and both parties selected appraisers who then chose an umpire. The association's appraiser disclosed, on the day of final negotiations, that he believed he had a financial stake in the award due to a contingency-fee retainer. The insurer did not object at that time, and the appraisal panel issued an award over a month later. Subsequently, the insurer moved to vacate the award, claiming the appraiser's partiality.The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied the insurer's motion to vacate the award, ruling that the insurer had waived its objection by not raising it sooner. The court also confirmed the appraisal award.The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reviewed the case and affirmed the district court's decision. The appellate court held that the insurer waived its objection to the appraiser's partiality by failing to object at the time of the disclosure. The court emphasized that a party must timely object to an arbitrator's or appraiser's partiality when it becomes aware of a potential conflict of interest. By waiting over two months and until after the award was issued, the insurer forfeited its right to challenge the appraiser's impartiality. The court did not address other arguments related to the choice of law or the appraiser's partiality, as the waiver issue was dispositive. View "Biscayne Beach Club Condominium Association, Inc. v. Westchester Surplus Lines Insurance Company" on Justia Law

Constantin, an accounting firm, performed an audit for Schratter Foods Incorporated, a food services company. The audit allegedly went wrong, leading to liability. Constantin had a professional services insurance policy from Chubb Insurance Company of New Jersey, which covered services directed toward expertise in banking finance, accounting, risk and systems analysis, design and implementation, asset recovery, and strategy planning for financial institutions. Constantin assigned its rights under the policy to ECB USA, Inc., Atlantic Ventures Corp., and G.I.E. C2B (collectively, the ECB parties).The ECB parties sued Chubb in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, seeking to enforce Constantin’s assigned contractual rights, alleging a breach of contract based on Chubb’s duty to defend or indemnify in the earlier lawsuit. The district court granted summary judgment to Chubb, ruling that the insurance policy did not cover the audit because it was not performed for a financial institution. The court also granted reformation of the 2017–18 contract to include Constantin as a named insured.The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reviewed the case. The court held that the phrase “for financial institutions” in the insurance policy modified all the terms in the list, including “accounting.” The court applied the series-qualifier canon of interpretation, which suggests that a postpositive modifier like “for financial institutions” modifies all the terms in a list of parallel items. The court found that the surrounding language of the policy supported this interpretation. The court rejected ECB’s arguments based on the last-antecedent canon and contra proferentem, concluding that the policy unambiguously required the services to be for financial institutions. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Chubb. View "ECB USA, Inc. v. Chubb Insurance Company of New Jersey" on Justia Law

The case involves two brothers, Levi and Benjamin Goldfarb, who sought payment of a $500,000 claim under an Accidental Death & Dismemberment insurance policy after their father, Dr. Alexander Goldfarb, died while mountain climbing in Pakistan. The insurer, Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, denied the claim because the cause of Dr. Goldfarb’s death was unknown, and therefore, his beneficiaries could not show that he died by accident. The Goldfarb brothers challenged the denial in district court under the Employee Retirement Security Act.The district court ruled in favor of the Goldfarbs, stating that Dr. Goldfarb’s death was accidental and that Reliance Standard’s failure to pay the Accidental Death & Dismemberment claim was arbitrary and capricious. The court granted summary judgment to the Goldfarbs and denied Reliance Standard’s cross motion for summary judgment. Reliance Standard appealed this decision.The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit disagreed with the district court's decision. The appellate court found that Reliance Standard’s decision that Dr. Goldfarb’s death was not accidental under the insurance policy was supported by reasonable grounds, and the denial of the Goldfarbs’ claim for benefits was not arbitrary and capricious. Therefore, the court reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Goldfarbs and directed the court to enter judgment in Reliance Standard’s favor. View "Goldfarb v. Reliance Standard Life Insurance Co." on Justia Law

The case involves a dispute between James Snell, a landscaper, and his insurer, United Specialty Insurance Company. Snell was sued for negligence after a child was injured on a trampoline he had installed at a client's home. United refused to defend Snell in the lawsuit, arguing that the accident did not arise from Snell’s landscaping work as defined in his commercial general liability policy. Snell sued United, alleging breach of contract and bad faith denial of coverage.The United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama granted summary judgment in favor of United. The court held that the accident did not arise from Snell's landscaping work within the meaning of his insurance policy. The court also found that Snell's bad faith claim failed because United had a lawful basis to deny the claim.On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's decision. The appellate court agreed that the allegations in the complaint did not trigger United’s duty to defend. The court also found that Snell's insurance application, which expressly stated that he did not do any recreational or playground equipment construction or erection, made clear that the policy did not cover his work in this case. The court further held that Alabama law does not preclude a decision on the duty to indemnify before judgment in the underlying case. Finally, the court concluded that Snell’s bad faith claim failed because he did not show that United wholly failed to investigate any part of his claim. View "Snell v. United Specialty Insurance Company" on Justia Law

This case, decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, involved an insurance dispute concerning coverage for defects and delays in the construction of an office building. Riverside Avenue Partners, Ltd. contracted with the Auchter Company to construct the building. After experiencing delays and water intrusion, Riverside Avenue Partners sued Auchter and its surety, Arch Insurance Company. Auchter and Arch filed a third-party complaint against TSG Industries, the window subcontractor, and other subcontractors. TSG's insurer, Landmark American Insurance Company, initially recognized Auchter as an additional insured but later refused to defend them, leading Amerisure, Auchter’s primary insurance provider, to defend Auchter under a reservation of rights.Upon review, the Eleventh Circuit dismissed the appeal, concluding that it lacked jurisdiction. The court determined that the district court's purported final judgment in the case, which favored Amerisure, did not dispose of all claims against all parties, so it was not final. Specifically, Landmark's crossclaim against TSG, stating it had no duty to defend or indemnify TSG in the underlying action, remained unresolved. Despite Amerisure's post-argument briefing suggestion that the declaratory judgments issued below fully answered questions related to Landmark's obligations to TSG, the court maintained that the claims against TSG were still pending, thus lacking jurisdiction to hear the appeal. The court dismissed the appeal and recommended the unresolved matters to the attention of the district court on remand. View "Amerisure Insurance Company v. Landmark American Insurance Company" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a class action lawsuit that involved a life insurance policy dispute between plaintiff Worth Johnson and defendant Protective Life Insurance Company. Johnson alleged that Protective breached its contract by not reassessing and adjusting its cost of insurance (COI) rates based exclusively on expectations of future mortality experience. The district court granted Protective’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, concluding that Protective did not breach its insurance contract.On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's decision in part, agreeing that the policy did not require Protective to reassess and redetermine its COI rates based exclusively on its expectations as to future mortality experience. However, the court reversed the district court's dismissal of Johnson's alternative claim that Protective did reassess and redetermine its COI rates, but ignored its expectations as to future mortality experience when doing so. The court remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with its ruling. View "Johnson v. Protective Life Insurance Company" on Justia Law

In this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had to apply Florida tort law to a dispute concerning the collapse of a crane boom. The plaintiff, NBIS Construction & Transport Insurance Services, Inc., an insurer of the crane's owner, sued the defendants, Liebherr-America, Inc., a distributor and servicer of the type of crane in question, for over $1.7 million in damages resulting from the collapse. The defendants argued that they were shielded from liability by Florida’s economic loss rule. The magistrate judge, after a five-day bench trial, rejected this argument. The court of appeals found Florida law unclear on this issue and certified a question to the Florida Supreme Court.The facts of the case involved a crane purchased by Sims Crane & Equipment Company from a non-party broker, which was manufactured by Liebherr Werk Ehingen GMbH. Two Sims crane operators received training from a Liebherr-America employee, which involved swapping out different configurations of the crane boom. However, the training was inadequate and did not provide sufficient information about the proper placement of specific pins which, if misadjusted, could cause the crane boom to collapse. When the crane boom did collapse during a construction project, causing a fatality and damage to the crane, NBIS filed a negligence suit against Liebherr-America.The key issue in the case was whether Florida’s economic loss rule, which generally limits recovery in tort cases to situations where there is damage to other property or personal injury, and not just economic loss, applied in this case. The defendants argued that the rule should apply because the plaintiff’s negligence claims were akin to failure to warn theories found in products liability law, which fall within the scope of the rule. The plaintiff argued that the rule should not apply because this was not a product liability case asserting a product defect, but rather a case alleging negligent services provided by the defendants. Because the court found Florida law unclear on this issue, it certified the question to the Florida Supreme Court. View "NBIS Construction & Transport Insurance Services, v. Liebherr-America, Inc." on Justia Law

In the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the Court reviewed a case involving the estates of two patients who passed away after undergoing liposuction procedures at CJL Healthcare, LLC in Georgia. After the patients' deaths, their estates filed lawsuits against the clinic and its doctor. The clinic's insurer, Prime Insurance Co., defended the clinic under a reservation of rights but ultimately withdrew its defense after the costs of defending the lawsuits exhausted the insurance coverage.The estates of the patients and the clinic then filed a lawsuit against the insurers, Prime Insurance Co., Prime Holdings Insurance Services, and Evolution Insurance Brokers, claiming they had breached their duties, contract, and acted negligently. They also claimed the insurers had unlawfully sold surplus lines insurance. The district court dismissed the case, and the plaintiffs appealed.The Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's decision. The Court held that the policy unambiguously provided a $50,000 limit for a single professional liability claim and a $100,000 aggregate limit for all claims. The Court further held that the insurers' duty to defend the clinic ended when the policy limits were exhausted by payment of damages and claim expenses. The Court also affirmed the district court's finding that the Georgia Surplus Lines Insurance Act did not provide a private cause of action for the unauthorized sale of surplus lines insurance. View "Jumlist v. Prime Insurance Co." on Justia Law

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in a dispute between Travelers Property Casualty Company of America and Talcon Group LLC. Talcon, an underground utility contractor, had an insurance policy with Travelers. Two residential homes under construction and connected to Talcon were destroyed by fire. Talcon filed a claim with Travelers, which was denied on the grounds that the policy only covered their underground utility operations and related site development work, not home construction. Talcon argued that the policy was ambiguous and should cover the homes as they were newly constructed during the policy period. The Court of Appeals, affirming the district court's summary judgment in favor of Travelers, held that the policy unambiguously did not cover the construction of the two homes. The court noted that when viewed together with Talcon's insurance application, the policy clearly restricts coverage to Talcon's underground utility and site development work. The court also stated that the policy's exclusion of pre-existing buildings did not imply coverage for all new construction, only buildings related to Talcon's specified operations. View "Travelers Property Casualty Company of America v. Talcon Group LLC" on Justia Law