A Colorado jury has awarded $37 million in punitive damages and other damages in an individual health insurance rescission case.
The lawyers who represented Jennifer Latham and her children in the case, Latham et al. vs. Assurant Health et al., had asked for only $7 million in damages.
Latham sued in a state court in Boulder, Colo., over a decision by Assurant Health, Milwaukee, to take back a policy it had issued to Latham a few months earlier.
Assurant Health, a unit of Assurant Inc., New York (NYSE:AIZ), is planning to fight the verdict.
"While we cannot discuss the specifics of this case, we disagree strongly with the verdict and will vigorously pursue post-trial motions and appeals," a company spokesman says.
Latham bought an insurance policy from Assurant Health in 2005. In October 2005, a meth dealer who was fleeing from the police hit her car and put her in the hospital with broken bones and brain trauma, according to Latham's lawyers.
Assurant Health tried to rescind Latham's policy, on the grounds that Latham had provided ambiguous information about a uterine condition and an emergency room visit for a panic attack in her application for coverage, according to Latham's lawyers.
Latham's lawyers told jurors that the Assurant Health application was too hard for a layperson to understand, and they presented witnesses who testified that the company had rescinded Latham's policy without notifying Latham.
Members of the jury told Westword, a Denver news blog, that they had awarded a large amount of damages because they wanted to send a message to Assurant Health.
A verdict form posted on the website of Latham's lawyers shows that the jurors allocated about $380,000 in damages for Latham's past medical bills and other family members' past medical bills that were related to the automobile collision and for future collision-related medical expenses for Latham and those family members. The jurors also awarded millions of dollars for mental suffering, economic damages and non-economic damages.
Marc Levy, the lawyer who led Latham's legal team, represents insurance companies as well as policyholders. In January, he says, he defended another insurer against bad faith claims.
***
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect description of the composition of the Latham verdict damages. The damage total includes economic damages, noneconomic damages, and other types of damages in addition to punitive damages.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.