In Part I of this series, we discussed institutional bad faith and best practices for insurers to minimize the risk of these costly and intrusive lawsuits. In Part II, we will focus on cutting discovery off at the pleadings—by narrowing the plaintiff’s claim, you limit the scope of relevance in discovery. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b), “[p]arties may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case….” Plaintiffs often allege institutional bad faith by providing a small amount of information pertaining to the company at large, and then making significant inferences and conclusions and offering those inferences as factual allegations. A skilled attorney can…
