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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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Remington settled, so there's really no deep dive to be had. From a litigator's perspective, 73 million divided by nine plaintiffs is about 8 million per, which is about in line with what I'd evaluate a case with a murdered child for, especially considering that the sympathy factor is high here, and especially since there have been a lot of ridiculously high verdicts lately in some jurisdictions (though I don't know about where the suit was filed). When you consider that a jury would have easily awarded at least 20 million per had the plaintiffs won, 8 million seems about in the ballpark for what I'd recommend if I were their attorney.

Did a bit more digging:

  • Remington was already bankrupt so this payout was the max that insurance could cover.
  • Would Remington have actually lost? The ads they put out were stupid, garden variety "man card" shit, and Adam didn't even buy the rifle - his mom did.
  • If the insurance company was already emptying their coffers for a settlement, why not gamble on a trial to reduce the total cost? A bigger jury payout would have been blood from a stone.

As a preliminary matter, trials aren't free, and as stingy as insurance companies can be, they'd much rather pay policy holders than attorneys, so the cost of litigation is always going to be a factor. To get to the central reason, though, we have to look at some more arcane details. Even though Remington was insolvent, they still had a duty to protect their creditors and thus a motivation to settle the suit within the policy limits. So they were obviously pushing for settlement. The Plaintiff's were obviously pushing for settlement, and there's a good chance that the judge was as well. As I said in my above post, their lawyers probably told them it was a reasonable settlement amount.That leaves the insurance companies, who may have had a good argument but not exactly a guaranteed defense verdict, especially given the highly sympathetic Plaintiffs and highly unsympathetic defendant. Remington spent several years trying to get the case thrown out but once those efforts failed and they knew the case would go to a jury, the jig was about up.

So what about the insurance companies? On paper their exposure was limited. In reality, the insurer has a duty to act in good faith. If everyone involved wants to settle and the insurers refuse, it's likely that they're going to be held responsible for the entire verdict, regardless of the policy limits (maybe not the entire verdict but you catch my drift). As soon as the jury delivers an eye watering verdict the insurers are going to be hit with a bad faith suit from Remington that they're going to have to spend even more money defending just so they can get the court to say they're only responsible for 70% of the excess rather than 100%.

There is also a federal law on the books that specifically precludes this exact sort of lawsuit.

When the court is already violating black-letter law to try the case, you aren't gambling on a trial any more.