If you have not been to the Jersey Shore in the summer, you have missed out. My mother grew up in Philadelphia and always talked about going to the New Jersey beaches in the summertime. Following Superstorm Sandy in 2012, I lived and worked in New Jersey and greater New York City.

Two of my favorite blog posts worth reading are Reflections on Superstorm Sandy Along the Jersey Shore Almost Seven Years After the Catastrophe, and Labor Day on the Jersey Shore and the Ocean Sand Exclusion.

I was in our Red Bank, New Jersey office yesterday working with Dan Ballard on an Ohio bad faith case. A major property insurance company paid the real property damage but did not adjust the contents claim. Many insurance companies pay adjusters to do all kinds of estimates on real property damage, knowing that restoration contractors will provide competing bids and invoices for real property damage. Many insurers hope that policyholders will be lazy regarding the contents and they delay and fail to adjust the contents loss, hoping to minimize payment. It is the insurance version of retail breakage that retailers realize when we fail to cash in our gift cards. The failure to promptly and fully adjust contents loss claims are valid and often overlooked bad faith claims.

I recently wrote about Ohio insurance bad faith law in What is Insurer Bad Faith in Ohio? While the law is unsettled whether it applies to bad faith claims, Ohio placed a cap on tort claim punitive damages to twice the amount of compensatory damages. Under Ohio’s tort statute, the maximum recovery for punitive damages is governed by O.R.C. 2315.21(D), which provides:

(D)(1) In a tort action, the trier of fact shall determine the liability of any defendant for punitive or exemplary damages and the amount of those damages.

(2) Except as provided in division (D)(6) of this section, all of the following apply regarding any award of punitive or exemplary damages in a tort action:

(a) The court shall not enter judgment for punitive or exemplary damages in excess of two times the amount of the compensatory damages awarded to the plaintiff from that defendant….

How about this ad by John Robison regarding his appraisal seminar in Denver on August 15-19:

I will be at this event on Monday, August 15, and hope to see you there. Poor Steve Badger has to follow me. If you want excitement, be there on August 15. Good luck to Steve keeping up with my opening act! Steve is from Texas, but I actively practice law in Colorado, and Colorado is a different appraisal world than anywhere else in the United States.

Here is the link to sign up.

Thought For The Day

Grilling outside with my parents at the Jersey shore. We would grill lobster and corn in the summer.
—Bobby Flay