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July 14, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California appellate panel on July 13 reversed a judgment dismissing a lawsuit brought by an orthopedic spine surgeon accusing an insurer of interference with prospective economic relations for allegedly retaliating against him after he advocated for his patients to receive coverage for spinal surgeries.
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July 14, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A California appeals panel on July 13 affirmed a jury’s verdict that an insurer breached its contract, acted in bad faith and owed an insured apartment complex owner punitive damages in a coverage dispute arising from the 2017 Tubbs fire but held that the jury’s $6.5 million punitive damages award is “constitutionally excessive.”
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July 14, 2026
LOS ANGELES — An insured distributor of stone products and countertops claims in a complaint filed in California federal court that its insurer breached its contract and acted in bad faith by relying on its policies’ silica exclusion to deny coverage for the majority of 450 underlying bodily injury suits filed against the insured by individuals who claim that they were injured as a result of exposure to silica and other toxins in the insured’s stone products.
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July 14, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge, upon reviewing the pleadings in a removed lawsuit accusing several insurers of failing to timely pay a plastic surgery office for out-of-network costs that were approved by an arbitrator, remanded the suit sua sponte after determining that the office’s claim for violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL), purportedly based on an alleged violation of the federal No Surprises Act (NSA), does not create federal question jurisdiction.
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July 13, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California homeowner sued an insurer and its managing general agency in a California state court, alleging that they delayed and underpaid a covered plumbing loss claim, refused demolition and mitigation expenses that led to a $17,454.10 contractor suit and handled the claim under a reinsurance and profit-sharing structure that gave the agency a financial interest in reducing claim payments.
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July 08, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge denied an insurer’s motion for certification for an interlocutory appeal of an order in which the judge found that silica and total pollution exclusions do not bar coverage for underlying silica bodily injury suits filed against an insured after determining that the insurer failed to show that the order presents substantial grounds for a difference of opinion.
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July 07, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A trial court properly entered summary judgment in favor of a homeowners insurer in a water and mold damage coverage dispute because the insured failed to file suit within a year of the insurer’s denial of coverage as required by the policy’s one-year suit limitations provision, a California appellate panel said.
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July 06, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge on July 2 granted in part class certification and a motion for a preliminary injunction in a putative class action against the U.S. Department of Justice and a California children’s hospital seeking to stop the DOJ from obtaining patient records related to gender-affirming care as evidence of purported violations of the False Claims Act (FCA), finding that provisional class certification and injunction apply to a specific subclass because the plaintiffs failed to establish the commonality and typicality requirements under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for the statewide class.
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July 06, 2026
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Following a bench trial, a California federal judge ruled in favor of an insurer who sought reimbursement of legal costs that an insured obtained in defending against a suit accusing him of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by posting fake Craigslist ads under a business competitor’s name purportedly seeking sexual encounters, finding that the insured’s conduct was excluded from coverage because it was willful and intentional.
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July 06, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California state judge denied a consumer research and advocacy organization’s petition for a writ of mandate challenging California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s FAIR Plan assessment pass-through bulletins, holding that the provision the advocacy group relied on governs the allocation of writings, expenses, profits and losses among FAIR Plan member insurers, not insurers’ later financial dealings with policyholders.
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July 02, 2026
PASADENA, Calif. — Rejecting the appellant’s reliance on an award of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits that occurred after the determination at issue, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel handed down an unpublished memorandum disposition affirming a ruling that upheld denial of a claim for long-term disability (LTD) benefits.
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June 23, 2026
PASADENA, Calif. — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on June 22 entered a mandate on its earlier ruling that vacated a lower federal court’s judgment in favor of an excess insurer in a coverage lawsuit over 50-year-old sexual abuse claims brought against a California Catholic diocese, remanding for the lower court to reconsider its ruling in light of the County of San Bernardino v. Ins. Co. of the State of Pennsylvania decision.
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June 23, 2026
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A California federal judge dismissed the employer of an underlying plaintiff from an insurer’s suit seeking a declaration that no coverage is owed for an underlying carbon monoxide poisoning suit after the insurer notified the court that it was voluntarily dismissing the employer from the suit.
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June 19, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California granted an excess insurer’s motion for summary judgment in a developer’s breach of contract case against it, finding that the insurer did not breach the insurance contract by not participating in mediation proceedings the developer conducted with homeowners who reported construction defects because there was no suit to defend against.
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June 19, 2026
SANTA ANA, Calif. — A California appellate panel held that a developer could not recover against an insurer for settlements it entered into in a construction defect lawsuit because the insurer had not been provided notice of the suit until after the developer had entered into the settlements, affirming the judgment entered in favor of the insurer.
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June 19, 2026
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Granting summary judgment for an insurer on all claims in a putative class case involving disability benefits under a group occupational accident coverage (OAC) policy offered to independent contractors, a California federal judge ruled that the insurer is entitled to $75,446.71 in equitable restitution for short-term disability (STD) benefits it paid because the claimant also received a $40,000 settlement that falls under the policy’s nonduplication of workers’ compensation provision.
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June 19, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — In an answering brief filed in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, a general contractor and the man who hired the contractor argue that the court should affirm a lower court’s grant of summary judgment in their favor because the plaintiff insurer did not file its action for rescission within four years of certain representations becoming false.
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June 19, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California found that because a contractor made material misrepresentations in his insurance application, an insurer had no obligation to pay a portion of the contractor’s defense or the settlement the contractor reached in an underlying case regarding the contractor’s allegedly faulty work.
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June 18, 2026
LOS ANGELES — An insurer filed a motion for partial summary judgment in California federal court, arguing it is entitled to reimbursement for funds it spent defending an interior designer in an underlying action brought against the designer for negligence because the designer’s allegedly improper selection of materials that allegedly resulted in property damage did not qualify as an accident under the policy.
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June 18, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal judge in California granted a Write-Your-Own (WYO) insurer’s unopposed motion to dismiss its insureds’ lawsuit seeking $12,500 in additional coverage for their alleged “structural damage” arising from a 2023 flood, holding that dismissal is proper because the insureds failed to file their lawsuit within the one-year period that is required under their Standard Flood Insurance Policy (SFIP).
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June 18, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California dismissed amended complaints filed by a contractor’s excess insurers against the contractor’s primary and excess insurer, finding that the primary and excess insurer’s policies did not cover defective work done by a prior contractor that the contractor was hired to remediate.
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June 17, 2026
LOS ANGELES — After a federal judge in California granted final judgment in favor of developers who filed suit seeking insurance coverage for construction defects, the developers are asking the judge to add the amount of prejudgment interest to the judgment.
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June 17, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Focusing on a claim for breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing and saying in part that “a finder of fact could draw contradictory inferences regarding the reasonableness of” the investigation, a California federal judge denied cross-motions for summary judgment in a suit over termination of long-term disability (LTD) benefits for a claimant whose diagnoses include postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and fibromyalgia.
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June 17, 2026
LOS ANGELES — An insurer told a California federal court that its suit seeking more than $5 million from guarantors after a reinsurer allegedly defaulted on obligations under a 2019 reinsurance agreement should proceed because the defendants executed absolute payment guaranties triggered by the reinsurer’s unwillingness or inability to pay and the insurer does not need to first obtain a judgment in a related New York action to state a plausible breach of guaranty claim.
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June 16, 2026
LOS ANGELES — An insured maintains in its reply in support of its motion to stay its silica coverage suit pending in California federal court that a stay is warranted until the underlying silica bodily injury suits are resolved but says the stay should be limited to the indemnification and bad faith claims.