upholding $36,600 award of attorney fees based on a forty percent contingent-fee contract, even where the lodestar method would have set fees at $18,000, because the trial judge “did not simply ‘rubber stamp’ the attorney-client fee agreement but offered reasons for holding that $36,600 was a proper fee”
How later courts described this case
- upholding $36,600 award of attorney fees based on a forty percent contingent-fee contract, even where the lodestar method would have set fees at $18,000, because the trial judge “did not simply ‘rubber stamp’ the attorney-client fee agreement but offered reasons for holding that $36,600 was a proper fee”
- finding the penalty was appropriate despite the insurer’s purported good faith in contesting claim
- A direct loss is one proximately caused by the hazard insured against.
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Wendell L. Griffen, Judge, dissenting. I would reverse because of the trial court’s decision to instruct the jury regarding ambiguity. I agree with appellant that the instruction was not warranted by the evidence. The policy provision that excluded from coverage loss caused “direcdy or indirectly by (a) frost or cold weather or (b) snow storm, tidal wave, high water or overflow, whether driven by wind or not” is clear, definite, and unconfusing.
Appellees presented proof and argued that their loss resulted from hail, a named peril in their insurance policy. Appellant contended that their loss was caused by ice and snow. Obviously, the policy could not cover loss caused by hail and exclude hail. Unless one reasons that frost, cold weather, snow storm, tidal wave, high water, or overflow can be reasonably confused for hail, it would seem that no ambiguity existed in the policy language to justify the jury instruction.