Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
After a surgery went horribly awry at a private surgical center, and the center was sued by the patient, it could not recover the full amount of judgment against it from its insurer an appellate court found. The court found that the surgery center had urged its insurer, who was defending it in the patient’s lawsuit, not to settle, as it believed its case to be highly defensible. Because of this, the panel found that the insurer had behaved appropriately even though it eventually lost and the jury awarded damages that were more than quintuple the surgical center’s policy limit.
Surgery Center at 900 North Michigan Avenue, LLC is an outpatient surgical center that permits outside physicians to perform day surgery at its facility. American Physicians Assurance Corporation, Inc. is a medical malpractice insurance company that insured Surgery Center. The insurance policy that Surgery Center purchased from APA limited APA’s liability to $1 million per claim and provided that APA would defend and indemnify Surgery Center for claims that fell within the policy’s coverage. Continue reading ›