Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court,
This case presents us with the opportunity to clarify the method by which Texas courts should conduct legal sufficiency review of factfindings of bad faith against an insurer. After a windstorm, Golda Lyons submitted a claim to Millers Casualty Company, her homeowner’s insurance carrier, for damage to the brick veneer and outside back staircase of her house. Following an investigation, Millers denied Lyons’ claim. Lyons sued for breach of contract and of the duty of good faith and fair dealing. The essence of this controversy is that while Lyons claims the damage to her house was caused by the windstorm, a covered peril, Millers claims that it was caused by settling of the foundation, an excluded peril. Because we hold that there is no evidence to support the bad faith judgment for Lyons under the substantive test we adopted in Aranda v. Insurance Co. of North America,
Lyons testified at trial that during a storm on April 29,1984, she heard something banging on the outside of the house. She later discovered that bricks within the external veneer were cracked and loose and that the back staircase was standing “out of kilter.” According to Lyons and two of her neighbors, this damage did not exist before the storm. The storm also knocked over a hack-
After Lyons submitted her claim to Millers, Hal Benoy, an adjustor for Millers, and Charlie Herman, a reconstruction expert hired by Benoy, inspected the house. Herman concluded that the damage was not caused by the storm, but rather by settling and shifting of the foundation. He based this conclusion on several cracks he found in the foundation and the absence of any indication of impact between a tree and the house. Herman also noted that the wood in the staircase was rotted. Millers denied the claim five days after receiving Herman’s written report, less than one month after the storm.
When Lyons protested the denial of her claim, Millers dispatched Clyde Hardy, a registered professional engineer specializing in damage and failure analysis, to reinspect the property. Hardy’s conclusions were identical to Herman’s. He likewise noted the existence of numerous cracks in the foundation, indicating settling and shifting, and the absence of any evidence of contact between a tree and the house. On October 5, 1984, based on Hardy’s report, Millers again denied Lyons’ claim.
In August 1985 Lyons hired Marcus Avila, an architect and resident engineer with Trinity Construction Materials, to inspect the property. By the time of Avila’s inspection, the staircase had collapsed following a second storm on March 28, 1985. Avila concluded that the original damage to the staircase and the brick veneer had been caused by the April 1984 storm. He theorized that the surviving hackberry tree located near the staircase, rather than the one found laying on the ground, struck the house during the first storm, causing the damage.
In February 1986 Lyons sued Millers for breach of contract, violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) and the Texas Insurance Code, and breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing. A jury found that one-quarter of the structural damage to the house was attributable to the windstorm, three-quarters was attributable to settlement of the structure, and that $25,-000 was the reasonable cost to repair the residence. The jury further found that Millers violated the DTPA, and breached its duty of good faith and fair dealing in failing to pay Lyons’ claim, awarding an additional $75,000 in damages for those claims, plus exemplary damages of $8,700. The trial court rendered judgment on the verdict for $89,950, plus pre-judgment interest and attorneys’ fees.
On appeal, the court of appeals determined that there was no evidence of a breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing or a violation of the DTPA; it therefore rendered a take-nothing judgment on those claims.
We first recognized an insurer’s tort duty of good faith and fair dealing to its insured in Arnold v. National County Mutual Fire Ins. Co.,
A cause of action for breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing is stated when it is alleged that there is no reasonable basis for denial of a claim or delay in payment or a failure on the part of the insurer to determine whether there is any reasonable basis for the denial or delay.
Id. at 167 (emphasis added). That duty arises from the special relationship between
A year later, in Aranda v. Insurance Co. of North America, we said that to establish an insurer’s liability for the tort of bad faith the insured must prove:
(1) the absence of a reasonable basis for denying or delaying payment of the benefits of the policy and (2) that the carrier knew or should have known that there was not a reasonable basis for denying the claim or delaying payment of the claim.
Appellate review of the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting a judgment for the insured in a bad faith case, however, presents unusual problems. Primary among these is the conundrum of a reviewing court scouring the record to evaluate an insurer’s claim that there is “no evidence” of a negative fact, that is, that the insurer had no reasonable basis to deny or delay payment of a claim.
The traditional statement of the standard of review for legal sufficiency requires a court to consider only the evidence favoring the judgment for the insured and to disregard all evidence to the contrary. See, e.g., Havner v. E-Z Mart Stores, Inc.,
As this case demonstrates, we believe that when a court is reviewing the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting a bad faith finding, its focus should be on the relationship of the evidence arguably supporting the bad faith finding to the elements of bad faith. The evidence presented, viewed in the light most favorable to the prevailing party, must be such as to permit the logical inference that the insurer had no reasonable basis to delay or deny payment of the claim, and that it knew or should have known it had no reasonable basis for its actions. See Pittman v. Baladez,
The evidence offered by Lyons in support of the bad faith finding consisted of Avila’s opinion that the windstorm caused the damage, and the testimony of Lyons and her neighbors that the brick veneer and staircase
But the issue of bad faith focuses not on whether the claim was valid, but on the reasonableness of the insurer’s conduct in rejecting the claim. Evidence of coverage might in some circumstances support a finding that an insurer lacked any reasonable basis for denying a claim, for example, when the insurer unreasonably disregards the evidence of coverage. In this case, however, Lyons offered no evidence that the reports of Millers’ experts were not objectively prepared, or that Millers’ reliance on them was unreasonable, or any other evidence from which a factfinder could infer that Millers acted without a reasonable basis and that it knew or should have known that it lacked a reasonable basis for its actions. In contrast, Miguel Aranda pleaded not only facts supporting coverage, but also alleged that the insurance companies ignored their own adjusters’ advice to pay his claim. Aranda,
By cross-application Millers contends that the court of appeals should have rendered judgment in its favor on the contract claim allegedly because there was no evidence providing a basis for the jury to allocate the damage between the storm and structural problems. When covered and excluded perils combine to cause an injury, the insured must present some evidence affording the jury a reasonable basis on which to allocate the damage. Paulson v. Fire Ins. Exch.,
As additional grounds for rendition, Millers relies on the court of appeals’ determination that the charge improperly instructed the jury on allocation of the cause of the damage
Accordingly, we affirm judgment of the court of appeals.
Notes
. The court of appeals did find legally and factually sufficient evidence to support the jury's finding that 25% of the damage was attributable to the windstorm, but nonetheless reversed and remanded the contract claim because of the submission of an erroneous jury issue. Question two asked the jury to determine the percentage of damage caused by windstorm and the percentage caused by "settlement of structure.” The court of appeals concluded that the question should have been submitted in terms of the policy exclusion, which excluded losses not only from settling but from "settling, cracking, bulging, shrinkage, or expansion of foundations.” The court also determined that question two did not properly place the burden of proof on Lyons to prove that the damage was not caused by foundation problems.
. This case was tried under the Aranda formulation of the bad faith test, and we therefore restrict our analysis accordingly.
. Evidence that (1) the claims adjuster refused to speak to Lyons after an investigator was sent out and the claim was denied, and (2) the adjuster did not interview her neighbors, does not amount to more than a scintilla of evidence supporting bad faith. See Kindred v. Con/Chem, Inc.,
. Question two asked the jury to determine the percentage of damage caused by the windstorm and the percentage cause by "settlement of structure." The court of appeals determined both that the question should have been submitted in terms of the more precise language of the policy exclusion and the burden of proof should have been placed on the insured to show that the damage was not caused by foundation problems.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
When an unequivocal constitutional command and concern for the insurance industry collide in this Court, the outcome is no longer in doubt.
In compliance with the Constitution, this Court, in determining a “no evidence” point, “must consider only the evidence and inferences tending to support the jury’s finding, viewed most favorably in support of the finding, and disregard all contrary evidence and inferences.” Havner v. E-Z Mart Stores, Inc.,
Today’s opinion changes all that by announcing a new rule, previously unknown in a no evidence review:
when a court is reviewing the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting a bad faith finding, its focus should be on the relationship of the evidence arguably supporting the bad faith finding to the elements of bad faith.
I.
The constitutional prohibition against fact-finding by this Court applies, no less than in any other situation, to an insurer’s contention that there is no evidence to support a jury finding of a delay or denial of a claim without reasonable basis. Until today, reasonableness had been recognized as a question of fact to be decided by the fact-finder. See, e.g., Adam Dante Corp. v. Sharpe,
Substituting its new relevancy analysis for this previously well-established law, the majority arbitrarily and without any explanation declares that evidence Lyons offers to show bad faith is only evidence of coverage. The categorical distinction drawn here between evidence relevant to coverage and evidence relevant to bad faith conflicts with our holding in Aranda v. Ins. Co. of North America,
II.
An obscure and incomplete summary of the record is presented in today’s opinion:
[t]he evidence offered by Lyons in support of the bad faith finding consisted of Avila’s opinion that the windstorm caused the damage, and her testimony and that of her neighbors that the brick veneer and staircase were visibly damaged after the storm.
Lyons offered no evidence that the reports of Millers’ experts were not objectively prepared, or that Millers’ reliance on them was unreasonable, or any other evidence from which a factfinder could infer that Millers acted without a reasonable basis and that it knew or should have known that it lacked a reasonable basis for its actions.
Corroborating Lyons’ own testimony regarding damage to the house caused by the windstorm, Louie Zivot, a neighbor and former lawyer for H. Ross Perot, testified that the back stairway was damaged by the storm to the point of being too dangerous to use. Until the storm, he also had observed no brick veneer damage. Having been in Lyons’ backyard both the day after this occurrence and several times before it, another neighbor, Mary Hairston, observed damage to the rear wall and the previously functional stairway only after the windstorm. The obvious and highly visible nature of the damage was evidenced by photographs, authenticated as showing the post-storm condition of the house, revealing severe damage to the stairway and to the brick on the rear wall; according to one eyewitness, the brick veneer had separated and pulled away “quite a distance” from the house.
Millers initially denied Lyons claim within a month of its receipt solely on the basis of a three sentence written “report”; its claims adjustor refused to talk to Lyons, even to the point of hanging up when she called with inquiries; and its investigators consciously chose not to interview any independent eyewitnesses until Lyons, almost two years after making her claim, filed suit. Compare State Farm Mut. Ins. Co. v. Moran,
Condemning it as “cumulative of Ms. Lyons’ own opinion,” the majority excuses completely the insurer’s failure to interview the only eyewitnesses to the aftermath of the windstorm.
The majority fails to mention other evidence that, when interpreted in a light favorable to the jury’s verdict, shows bad faith on the part of the insurer. Millers continued to refuse any payment on Lyons’ claim even after she produced an engineering report explaining a means, never fully explored by
Additional evidence was introduced from which the jury could have concluded that the claim was denied after only a perfunctory and incomplete investigation, which purposefully ignored evidence contradicting Millers’ predetermined conclusions. See Simmons,
Today’s opinion never indicates why these facts do not constitute some evidence that Millers’ failure to tender timely at least a portion of the estimated repair costs for the damage was without reasonable basis. Compare Crowe,
III.
When disagreeing with a jury verdict— particularly a jury verdict adverse to an insurance company — the majority increasingly substitutes its own preferences in place of the deliberations of a constitutionally empaneled jury composed of twelve members of the local community. Today’s opinion continues this steady erosion of our right to trial by jury. See, e.g., May v. United Services Ass’n of America,
. Today's opinion is but one example of the Court’s recent indifference to precedent and its commitment to wholesale revision of Texas law. See, e.g., General Motors Corp. v. Saenz,
. See, e.g., State Farm Fire & Cas. Co. v. Simmons,
. See also C & H Nationwide, Inc. v. Thompson,
