LAKELAND, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - The estate of a woman whose car hit and paralyzed a motorcyclist can’t get personnel records and other documents from Allstate Insurance to prove its case the insurer rejected settlement offers in bad faith. After lawyers for the motorcyclist couldn’t reach agreement within the woman’s insurance limits, they took the case to trial and won a $44 million jury verdict.
The court later reduced the verdict to $21.9 million – binding the estate of the driver, Deborah L. Veillueux, to pay -- in an agreement with Allstate to avoid a new trial. The Veillueux estate then sued Allstate and several of its employees for failing to settle the case and breaching their duty to defend by rejecting the opportunity for a new trial.
As part of that case, the estate’s lawyers sought the personnel files of Allstate employees involved in the accident claim and documents revealing the “goals, strategies, objectives, performance metrics or business targets” for the insurer’s claims department. A trial judge ordered Allstate to produce the documents, redacted to eliminate Social Security numbers, drug test results and personal financial and health information.
Allstate appealed, seeking a mandamus order to quash the document request. And Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal, in a Sept. 30 decision, agreed the trial judge went too far.
“The trial court departed from the essential requirements of the law by compelling production of documents from the personnel files without conducting an in-camera review,” the appeals court ruled.
“While the Estate's discovery requests in this case stop short of seeking wholesale production of the personnel files, they still encompass numerous categories of potentially irrelevant information which, if disclosed, could jeopardize the employees' privacy interests.”
The lower court also erred by ordering Allstate to turn over documents that might be protected under the attorney-client privilege, the appeals court said.