Court denies insurer’s exclusion motions in bad faith comp trial
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A Delaware court declined to bar evidence from a retrial of a jury decision awarding the estate of a man who died at his worksite $500,000 in damages for a bad faith delay in paying workers compensation benefits.
In Krieger v. AmGuard Insurance Co., the Superior Court of Delaware in Dover on Thursday dismissed AmGuard’s arguments for excluding evidence and testimony from retrial.
The estate of Mark Krieger sued AmGuard for an alleged bad faith delay in paying Mr. Krieger’s workers compensation benefits. A jury held that AmGuard “recklessly disregarded” the family’s rights, according to court documents, and awarded the estate $500,000 in punitive damages.
AmGuard moved for judgment as a matter of law, or in the alternative, for a new trial, and a court consented to grant a new trial after holding that the punitive damages award “shocked its conscience.”
AmGuard then filed several motions to bar evidence from the retrial. The estate objected to the motions on the basis that the insurer failed to object to these items in the initial trial, therefore waiving its rights.
The superior court denied all of AmGuard’s motions.
AmGuard argued in court documents that references in the first trial suggesting that executives “light their cigars” with the money it withheld from the estate were inflammatory, but the court held the trial could not “be sanitized” to the extent required by the insurer, and left it to the court in the retrial to resolve any objections as they arise. The court also dismissed arguments to exclude references to “secrets,” limit testimony and bar excerpts from other Delaware decisions in the retrial.
