Insurance Bad Faith Case Settled For $14.3 Million
ISMIE Mutual Insurance, Illinois’ largest medical malpractice insurer has been served with a $14.3 million dollar judgment as the result of an insurance bad faith case. The $14.3 million dollar judgment includes punitive damages, in a case involving a baby born with severe brain damage.
The Cook County jury found that the company acted in bad faith with they refused to settle a medical malpractice and negligence case for $5 million dollars when it was likely that the jury would award damages in excess of that amount.
The Hanas, parents of the child born with brain damage, received a total settlement of $4.8 million dollars, but claimed that ISMIE still owed them about $1.3 million dollars. Although they could have gone after the personal assets of the obstetricians involved in the medical malpractice, they decided to file a bad faith suit against ISMIE instead.
The suit alleges that the insurer, in order to protect its legal and financial interests, offered misleading information about the amount of insurance coverage available to cover the wrongful death claim and concealed a settlement offer from the plaintiffs that would have limited the financial risk of the doctors involved.