Insurance : Failure To Settle – Bad Faith – Damages

Where a construction company sued its commercial general insurer alleging a bad-faith failure to settle an underlying negligence action, the plaintiff offered substantial evidence of bad faith to make a submissible claim, and liability is affirmed for compensatory damages, but the judgment is reversed and remanded for a new trial on the issue of the amount of compensatory damages and on the liability and amount of punitive damages because the trial court erred in submitting a jury instruction allowing the jury to award punitive damages in the first stage of a bifurcated trial with no limiting instruction to show the damages were to be compensatory only.

Judgment is reversed and remanded.

Advantage Buildings & Exteriors, Inc. v. Mid-Continent Casualty Company (MLW No. 66901/Case No. WD76880 – 25 pages) (Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, Welsh, J.) Appealed from circuit court, Jackson County, Powell, J. (Vincent O’Flaherty, Robert Adams and Elizabeth Burke, Kansas City, Missouri, for appellant) (David Schatz and Lucinda Luetkemeyer, Kansas City, Missouri, for respondent).

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