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Notes -
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%.
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