Agredano v. State Farm Lloyds
Decision Date | 16 September 2020 |
Docket Number | No. 19-50656,19-50656 |
Citation | 975 F.3d 504 |
Parties | Jesus AGREDANO ; Margaret Agredano, Plaintiffs—Appellants, v. STATE FARM LLOYDS, Defendant—Appellee. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Joshua P. Davis, Attorney, Houston, TX, for Plaintiffs—Appellants.
Melissa A. Lorber, Attorney, Enoch Kever, P.L.L.C., Austin, TX, Defendant—Appellee.
Before Higginbotham, Elrod, and Haynes, Circuit Judges.
Jesus and Margaret Agredano ("Plaintiffs") sued their homeowners’ insurance company, State Farm Lloyds ("State Farm") after it denied their claim for windstorm damage to their home. Relevant here, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of State Farm on various causes of action but allowed Plaintiffs’ breach of contract claim to be presented to a jury, which granted a verdict in Plaintiffs’ favor. Although the Plaintiffs had sought attorney's fees1 and "statutory interest of 18%[,]" the district court (after originally granting this relief) ruled that the failure to specifically plead relief under Texas Insurance Code § 542.060 (the Texas Prompt Payment of Claims Act or "TPPCA") barred the requested relief and entered judgment only in the amount of the breach of contract damages found by the jury, together with regular pre-judgment and post-judgment interest. Plaintiffs timely appealed.2 We REVERSE and REMAND for reconsideration consistent with this opinion.
Two provisions in the Texas Insurance Code are relevant to our analysis. Section 542.058 of the Texas Insurance Code3 provides a cause of action against insurers who delay paying claims:
[I]f an insurer, after receiving all items, statements, and forms reasonably requested and required under Section 542.055, delays payment of the claim for a period exceeding the period specified by other applicable statutes or, if other statutes do not specify a period, for more than 60 days, the insurer shall pay damages and other items as provided by Section 542.060.
Section 542.060, in turn, allows plaintiffs to seek damages in the amount of their claim—plus 18% interest—for such delays:
[T]he insurer is liable to pay the holder of the policy or the beneficiary making the claim under the policy, in addition to the amount of the claim, interest on the amount of the claim at the rate of 18 percent a year as damages, together with reasonable and necessary attorney's fees.
State Farm argues that the Plaintiffs failed to plead a claim for the TPPCA interest under § 542.060 because Plaintiffs did not "specifically request" such a claim, that is, Plaintiffs did not cite the statute or quote the language of the statute. As a result, the district court originally granted Plaintiffs Chapter 542 relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(c), providing that the final judgment should "grant the relief to which each party is entitled, even if the party has not demanded that relief in its pleadings." Shortly thereafter, our court issued an unpublished (and, therefore, non-precedential) decision in Chavez v. State Farm Lloyds , 746 F. App'x 337 (5th Cir. 2018), which concluded that, because the bad faith insurance code claims had been properly dismissed by the district court, Chavez could not recover under § 542.060. As a result of the Chavez decision, the district court reversed its ruling in this case and denied the § 542.060 relief.
Plaintiffs pleaded that they submitted their claim and that it was denied. They further pleaded entitlement to an "18% [p]enalty [i]nterest pursuant to Ch. 542 of the Texas Insurance Code" and "[a]ttorney's fees." The only relevant statute entitling an insured to an 18% penalty is § 542.060. While the pleading could have been more robust, the Twombly / Iqbal "plausibility" standard does not require magic words or detailed facts in most cases. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) ; Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly , 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) ; see also Littell v. Hous. Indep. Sch. Dist. , 894 F.3d 616, 622 (5th Cir. 2018) ( ); Jacked Up, L.L.C. v. Sara Lee Corp. , 854 F.3d 797, 810 (5th Cir. 2017) ( ).4 Instead, it prohibits speculative claims, which the request for a TPPCA penalty interest clearly is not.
In addition to the lack of pleading deficit, this is not a situation where State Farm was surprised by the Plaintiffs’ request. State Farm never brought a Rule 12(e) claim that it did not understand the pleadings and, indeed, it clearly was aware of the § 542.060 claim because the Plaintiffs stated it in their discovery responses and State Farm argued in its summary judgment motion that the Plaintiffs had sought "causes of action based upon Chapter[ ] ... 542 of the Texas Insurance Code[.]" We conclude that the statutory interest claim was not improperly pleaded.
We now turn to the question Chavez addressed: whether a violation of the bad faith provisions of the Texas Insurance Code is a necessary prerequisite to § 542.060 relief. Chavez held as follows: 746 F. App'x at 343. No caselaw was cited for this proposition, and it is contrary to the Texas Supreme Court's holding in Lamar Homes, Inc. v. Mid-Continent Casualty Co. , 242 S.W.3d 1, 16 (Tex. 2007) :
The prompt-payment statute provides that an insurer, who is "liable for a claim under an insurance policy" and who does not promptly respond to, or pay, the claim as the statute requires, is liable to the policy holder or beneficiary not only for the amount of the claim, but also for "interest on the amount of the claim at the rate of eighteen percent a year as damages, together with reasonable attorney's fees."
See also Weiser-Brown Operating Co. v. St. Paul Surplus Lines Ins. Co. , 801 F.3d 512, 518 (5th Cir. 2015) ( ). Other prior decisions treated the provision as a strict liability statute. See, e.g. , Prudential Ins. Co. v. Durante , 443 S.W.3d 499, 512–13 (Tex. App.—El Paso 2014, pet. denied) ( ); U.S. Fire Ins. Co. v. Lynd Co. , 399 S.W.3d 206, 222 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2012, pet. denied) ( ).
However, we need not decide if Chavez was wrong when it was decided because subsequent Texas Supreme Court cases make clear that Chavez is no longer good law on this point. The Texas Supreme Court recently stated that "[n]othing in the TPPCA would excuse an insurer from liability for TPPCA damages if it was liable under the terms of the policy but delayed payment beyond the applicable statutory deadline[.]" Barbara Techs. Corp. v. State Farm Lloyds , 589 S.W.3d 806, 819 (Tex. 2019) ; see also Ortiz v. State Farm Lloyds , 589 S.W.3d 127, 135 (Tex. 2019) ( ). That court clearly treated the TPPCA as a strict liability provision. See Barbara Techs. Corp. , 589 S.W.3d at 813 (...
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