Dennis J. Wall

In Baldwin v. Standard Fire Ins. Co., 269 N.E.3d 1197 (Ind. 2025), a third-party bad faith case, the Supreme Court of Indiana adopted the "safe harbor" of Section 26 of the Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance (2019).  The Court was using the October 2024 Update on Westlaw, which it erroneously referred to as the "Second" Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance.  Baldwin, 269 N.E.3d at 1206-07.

"[I]nsurers may rely on an interpleader action as a 'safe harbor' that shields insurers from liability to their insureds."  Baldwin, 269 N.E.3d at 1207.

The liability insurer at bar filed an interpleader action, deposited its policy limits with the Court, and continued to provide its policyholder with a defense in the underlying liability case, all in the face of its evaluation that one claim among multiple claims against its policyholder would alone likely exceed its policy limits.  The Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts' grant of the liability carrier's motion for summary judgment, holding that the carrier cannot be liable for bad faith under these facts.  Baldwin, 268 N.E.3d at 1207-08.

The case law is still scanty, but available case law on the Restatement's journey through the Courts is discussed in Volume 1 of the Third Edition of LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH § 3:1 (Thomson Reuters West Publishing Co., with 2025 Supplements).  Case law involving insurer bad faith issues and Multiple Claimants including the role of interpleader, is collected in id., § 3:45.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2025 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.  Interested in many things including Claims and Bad Faith Law?  There's more on my Substack newsletter at claimsandissues.substack.com. 

Happy Thanksgiving!
Give Thanks!
 
Dennis Wall
Nov 27, 2025
 
 
Today is Thanksgiving! When we celebrate this year, and we emphatically should give thanks this year of all years, I will be giving thanks for many things. This is the highest form of resistance right now, to give thanks in a year and at a time that seems so dark and empty. There was no darker, emptier time than 1863 when President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday. As he lived to set people free, let us continue to hope for a country of free people, built by free people, and for free people. And continue to act on our hope so that it shall not perish from the earth.

 
I am thankful for the people. There are so many people that I am proud of. God, I am proud of these people. There are so many clever people it is fun as well as an honor to be among them. We all share a kinship, what I would even call a sense of belonging, even with the strangers I do not know and may never know.

And yes, I am thankful for our diversity.

 
 
People even hang outside in all kinds of weather and on bridges to nonviolently, persistently show up because they are needed. They are present to make a contribution.

 
See all the people lining the street on what looks like a sidewalk on the far side of the street in this photo. They are there, as I say, because they are making a contribution. God, I am proud of these people.

I am thankful for individuals in my life as well. I am thankful that we had the pleasure of the company of David. He came every week to help at our house and stayed to do much more that needed to be done, things like put up plywood to shield the windows in our house from a hurricane.

And I am thankful for our neighbor who retrieves our garbage cans and recycling bins up from the street, also without even being asked.

 
Hurricane Seen From Space. (NASA)

For their courage, I am thankful for Senator Mark Kelly and the other 6 Senators and Representatives who reminded us that soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force not only should not obey illegal orders, but they have a duty to refuse to obey unlawful orders.

 
An Astronaut's View From Space. (NASA)

 
And I am thankful for the people of Chicago. I associate them with courage too.

 
Night-time Chicago, Seen From Space. (NASA) (In the before times.)

And although I am certain that there are courageous people in Portland, as well as gracious people who have a sense of humor in Chicago, still I associate Portland with protest in frog costumes, showing their grace and humor.

 
And I am thankful for the Judges who apply the law and uphold the Constitution when others would commit felonies and destroy the Republic if they could get away with it.

 
In the midst of especially noisy times, I am thankful for times when it is quiet.

 
And I am thankful for my wife, Dianne. She is my hero and one of the more popular people I know. When I say one of the more popular people I know, I mean that people like her and she likes people. Dianne can speak with almost anyone about almost anything, and they and she feel comfortable while they're at it. She has a gift. And as I say, she is my hero.

 
Happy Thanksgiving!

 
A previous version of this article, with embedded photographs to illustrate, was published on ClaimsandIssues.substack.com.
 
(Photo credits:

All the bridge photos were previously published on Robert Hubbell's Substack newsletter, "Today's Edition."

NASA credits were given in the text.

All of the other photos are Author Photos.)

An early version of Rule 11 was recognized in some of the early cases explicitly cited as such in 1 DENNIS J. WALL, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH § 2:7, at n. 9 (Thomson Reuters West Publishing Co. Third Edition, with 2025 Supplements).  Modern procedure under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 is set out in the case of  Johnson v. Nationstar Mort. LLC, No. 1:25-cv-00855-JRR, 2025 WL 2938356, at *3 (D. Md. Oct. 16, 2025):

     Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 requires attorneys (and unrepresented parties) "to certify, on the basis of a reasonable inquiry, that any pleading or paper they file with a district court (1) is not filed 'for any improper purpose'; (2) is 'warranted by existing law'; and (3) alleges facts that 'have evidentiary support.' " Lokhova v. Halper, 30 F.4th 349, 354 (4th Cir. 2022) (quoting FED. R. CIV. P. 11(b)). This court may, in its discretion, impose sanctions for violations of Rule 11. FED. R. CIV. P. 11(c). "[I]n exercising that discretion to impose sanctions for a pleading or paper's lack of legal support, the court must apply an objective standard, inquiring whether 'a reasonable attorney in like circumstances could not have believed his actions to be legally justified.' " Lokhova, 30 F.4th at 354 (quoting Hunter v. Earthgrains Co. Bakery, 281 F.3d 144, 153 (4th Cir. 2022)). To be sanctionable, a legal argument must have "absolutely no chance of success under the existing precedent." Hunter, 281 F.3d at 153.

In the Johnson v. Nationstar case, the Court denied the Plaintiff's motion for Rule 11 sanctions because the record did not show that the Defendants' "counsel made sanctionable legal arguments or otherwise violated Rule 11."   Johnson, 2025 WL 2938356, at *3.  Further, the motion for sanctions "does not relate to a paper filed in this court[.]"  Johnson, 2025 WL 2938356, at *3.

As to a party Defendant, Progressive, the Court noted that once again the Plaintiff's motion for sanctions under Rule 11 related to matters outside the record, "not a filing made with the court for an improper purpose or without basis."  Johnson, 2025 WL 2938356, at *4.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2025 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.  Interested in many things including Claims and Bad Faith Law?  There's more on my Substack newsletter, claimsandissues.substack.com.  

In Colt's Mfg. Co., LLC v. Am. Int'l Spec. Lines Ins. Co., No. 3:23-CV-01156 (JCH), 2025 WL 1753691 (D. Conn. June 25, 2025), the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut disarmed Colt's Manufacturing and denied its motion for summary judgment on breach of contract and bad faith claims.  (The Court also went into the carrier's motion for summary judgment issues, but we will not address them in this space today.)

The first thing the Court decided was to follow established Connecticut law to the effect that a later agreement can supersede the terms of an earlier insurance contract between the parties:  "Under Connecticut law, '[a] recognized test for whether a later agreement between the same parties to an earlier contract constitutes a substitute contract looks to the terms of the second contract. If it contains terms inconsistent with the former contract, so that the two cannot stand together it exhibits characteristics ... indicating a substitute contract.'"  Colt's Manufacturing, 2025 WL 1753691, at *8 (quoting a Connecticut Supreme Court opinion). 

In this case, the District Court held that an Interim Defense Funding Agreement (IDFA) superseded the original insurance contract between the parties under Connecticut law.

With respect to Colt's Bad Faith Claim, the Court held that there were triable issues of material fact not as to Colt's claim under the insurance contract, but as to Colt's bad faith claim under the IDFA with its insurance carrier:

          "For the reasons the court has already explained, Colt's cannot bring its bad faith claim pursuant to the Insurers' supposed failure to abide by language in an insurance policy that does not govern the parties' obligations to pay defense expenses. See, supra, part IV.A.4. Regarding Colt's bad faith claim under the Fourth IDFA, Colt's has failed to adduce sufficient evidence to foreclose the possibility that a jury could find in the Insurers' favor as to this claim. It is, therefore, a triable issue of fact as to whether the Insurers acted in bad faith under to [sic] the Fourth IDFA. Accordingly, the court denies Colt's Motion to the extent it seeks summary judgment as to its claim of bad faith."

Colt's Manufacturing, 2025 WL 1753691, at *18.

The issues addressed in Colt's Manufacturing are also addressed in a collection of case law in the context of Informing the Insured:  Insurer Assertion of Rights to Reimbursement From the Insured of Clearly Noncovered Indemnity and Defense Expense, § 3:6 in Volume 1 of DENNIS J. WALL, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH (Thomson Reuters West Publishing Co. 3d Edition, with 2025 Supplements).

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2025 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.  Interested in many things including Claims and Bad Faith Law?  There's more on my Substack newsletter. 

LinkedIn took this post down because its algorithm (mis)identified misinformation:

Next thing [the regime] will say is that Tylenol (secretly) is a vaccine, because vaccines cause autism, they say.

https://claimsandissues.substack.com/p/its-not-just-the-emperor-the-regime

I HAVE TWO WORDS FOR YOU, LinkedIn:  JIMMY KIMMEL.

I left this Comment earlier today opposing repeal of the Roadless Rule.  The Comment period has been shortened to Friday, September 19, 2025.

As I said, I left this Comment in opposition to repeal of the Roadless Rule.

Do you think differently?

You can leave your own Comment at regulations.gov.  The Docket ID Number and the RIN are given to you below.  You now have all the information you need to leave your own Comment.

Thank you.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Re:     Docket ID No. FS-2025-0001-0001.

          You also identify this Notice as:

RIN 0596-AD66.

"Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation; National Forest System Lands."

This Comment concerns your captioned Department of Agriculture/Forest Service Notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement.

I have had the experience of hiking through forest until I reached roads under construction.  There the forest ended.  The forest never comes back, and sometimes the roads are built.  Sometimes the construction stops where it began, but the forest is gone regardless of whether the road is finished.

          Do you think differently?

          The experience of road construction finalizing forest annihilation, as I have had, should be part of your proposed repeal of the Roadless Rule.  It is not and so I add it in this Comment.  Whether you are aware of such experiences, or whether you yourselves have had such experiences, your proposed repeal of the Roadless Rule is not informed by these experiences.  It should be.

          Do you think differently?

In my home State of Florida, a significant part of the Apalachicola National Forest will be affected by repeal of the Roadless Rule.  Long Bay is in the Apalachicola National Forest.  The Forest Service designated this as a Roadless Area.  This too should be factored into your proposed repeal of the Roadless Rule.  It has not been factored in, and so I raise it too in this Comment.

          Whether you yourselves have walked the Apalachicola National Forest is not the point.  (If you have, you have clearly not allowed the experience to affect you.)  It is natural and free there, indicative of the "old Florida" before development came and "put up a parking lot" as the Joni Mitchell song says.

          That is worth conserving.  That is why it has been conserved.  Until now.

          Do you think differently?

For all these reasons, whether taken separately or together, your Notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule should be withdrawn or, if not withdrawn, it should be rejected by any reviewing Court and by the people.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide this Comment.

 Please read the disclaimer. ©2025 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved. Interested in many things including Claims and Issues? There's more on my Substack newsletter.  

Welcome to readers migrating here from Insurance Claims and Bad Faith Law Blog!  I hope you enjoy the content here, and that you may be fortunate enough to gain something during your visit here so that you can take it away with you and put it to good use now or in the future.

My best to you.

In Wright v. Utd. Serv's Auto. Ass'n, No. 1:23-cv-11155-ADB. 2025 WL 2617842 (D. Mass. Sept. 10, 2025), a District Judge turned a potential humiliation into an opportunity to send a message to an appellate court.

The District Judge, sitting in the District of Massachusetts, had already certified a question of great public importance for an immediate appeal to the federal appellate court that governed, which is the First Circuit Court of Appeals.  The question concerned whether "the" Filed Rate Doctrine required dismissal of the plaintiffs' claims which required a determination whether the defendants had overcharged the insurance rates involved in the case.

     The First Circuit sent a letter, I guess you would call it, to the District Court, a procedure which I personally have never seen before.  In basic terms, they asked the District Judge to respond with its own Memorandum to clarify what was such an important public issue that they had to address it.  Rather than view this as a potential humiliation of simply putting a lower court in its place which is a common phenomenon whenever the U.S. supreme court is involved these days, for example, the District Court in this case took this as an opportunity to get the First Circuit to answer some controlling questions of law.

     These questions control the ways in which federal courts approach the subject of Filed Rate Doctrines in insurance cases.  While it becomes obvious that the First Circuit's answers to these questions, if they answer them, have implications for insurance litigation throughout the United States, the very questions themselves have implications across the nation.

     Here are the questions, with supporting citations supplied by the District Judge removed for your ease of reference:

1.       When a federal court, sitting in diversity, needs to determine whether the filed-rate doctrine applies to bar a claim, should it look to state law or federal common law to determine whether the filed-rate doctrine applies to Massachusetts state agencies?  [Citations omitted.]

2.   If federal common law is the appropriate source of law, does the federal filed-rate doctrine apply to bar claims that implicate rates set by Massachusetts state agencies, or does it apply solely to those set by federal agencies? [Citations omitted.] 

 3.  If federal common law would apply the filed-rate doctrine to rates set by Massachusetts state agencies, is the doctrine quasi-preemptive, such that it applies to broadly bar legal or equitable challenges that implicate filed rates, as Defendants contend, or does it apply only to direct challenges to the rates themselves, as Plaintiffs contend?

Wright, 2025 WL 2617842, at *2.  Determinative questions.  How will the First Circuit respond?  How will other courts, federal and state Courts alike, respond?

          This is a case to follow.

Filed Rate Doctrines are explored in three Sections of my Book on Insurer Bad Faith, 2 DENNIS J. WALL, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH §§ 11:26, 11:26.50, and 11:26.75 (3d Edition Thomson Reuters West Publishing Co. with 2025 Supplements).

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2025 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.  Interested in many things including Claims and Bad Faith Law?  There's more on my Substack newsletter. 

Two ideas caught my attention in this Labor Day Week 2025. One is the legal doctrine known as the anti-commandeering doctrine. The other involves the enforcement of State laws and County and Municipal Ordinances.

The anti-commandeering doctrine has been defined in a major article in the Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review: "The anti-commandeering doctrine stands for the proposition that the federal government may not force state governments to carry out its will."

The anti-commandeering doctrine is generally spoken of with regard to acts of Congress, but it applies to everyone wielding the powers of the federal government. That is because the doctrine depends on the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which reserves all powers to the States which are not expressly given to the federal government.

I will explore this doctrine in more detail in the future, but my initial thought is that it provides a legal basis for at least some of the resistance to the regime's actions. It does not, I think at first glance, provide opposition itself.

That leads conveniently and directly to the second idea that has caught my attention recently: the idea that when actions are taken in the name of the federal government in such a way that the actions allegedly violate State criminal laws or County and Municipal ordinances, the perpetrators might be subject to local law and federal law cannot protect their crimes.

This could apply to assaults, kidnapping, "unlawful restraint," obstructing justice (such as by kidnapping people at courthouses who are there for legal proceedings in the courts), and in general "acting beyond their legal authority" in which case "they can be prosecuted, assuming they commit crimes, in state court." The quotes are attributed to Larry Krasner, District Attorney of the City of Philadelphia, in a Substack article.

Whether Krasner said these things or not, is not the point. Certainly not the point for me.

Rather, the idea expressed in these quotes is the point. It sounds theoretically plausible to me: If a person, anyone, commits a crime under State law or in violation of an ordinance, they are theoretically liable to be prosecuted for those crimes. That's an interesting idea, so far as it goes.

The City of Chicago has apparently adopted an ordinance against 'law enforcement officers' wearing masks and requiring them to show ID, among other things. I have seen some commentary that Chicago has not gone far enough to make violations of the ordinance legal offenses, but for the sake of argument at the moment suppose that these ordinances are enforceable law in Chicago.

I have seen the Police at work in Philadelphia and I have seen them in Chicago. Without having any personal experience with the Police in either city, I can tell you that in my judgment, the Philadelphia Police and the Chicago Police are both fully capable of enforcing the law in their cities.

That being said, the question becomes: Will they? Will they enforce the law and arrest 'federal officers' who commit State crimes in their cities? Or who violate County or Municipal Ordinances? If not, who will enforce the law?

A version of this article was published on Substack.  (You can see there photos of the sign, front and back, that I carried on Labor Day 2025.)

This article was inspired by Anat Shenker-Osario during her appearance on Michael Podhorzer's August 28, 2025  Substack Podcast.

She told a story of Colombia FARC rebels.  I cannot do it justice in this short space, so go ahead and listen to her in the original, here.

           The gist of the story ASO told is this.  In order to get the FARC guerilla soldiers to come to the table and negotiate peace, organizers asked the soldiers' mothers for baby pictures.  Part of their campaign was to hang copies of these photographs on clothes lines in the jungle where the guerrillas would see them.  The photos carried messages from their mothers.

"Before you were a guerilla soldier, you were my daughter" or "my son."  "Before you were a soldier, you were my child."

           And they saw the photographs.  Even when the guerillas came upon these photos and the photos were of others, the photos were close enough to their own reality to hit home.  Because of this and because of many other things as a part of an organized campaign to get them to come, they came to the peace table.

          This story is a reminder regarding the people in the National Guard and the people in the Marines, so far.

          Many of these people are unwilling.

          They can be court-martialed if they disobey legal orders.

          So far the regime is careful not to issue illegal orders; so far the regime's orders are written carefully with questionable legality at worst.  So far.

          As these words are written, it is the feast day of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist on the Catholic church's calendar.  No-one foresaw that Herod would demand the severed head of John the Baptist.  But he did.  He ordered his soldiers to cut off a man's head because the man had offended someone in the regime.

          Looking back to today and not the unknown future which has not yet been determined, it bears repeating that many people in the National Guard and Marines (so far) are unwilling to be sent where they have been sent inside the United States.

          How do we respond?  What do we say to them?

          What we say should not be negative but positive.  We shall not assume that these people will do evil but we will remind them of their oaths to do good.

          The National Guard in particular is made up of citizens who have willingly signed up to help others -- us -- in our time of need.  Anat Shenker-Osorio said that these words of hers need to be copy-edited, but I think they stand up very well as they are:   "In America we rely on the National Guard in times of crisis, in times of sorrow. You are the people who rescue us from the flood. You are the people who come to put out the fire.  You are the ones that come from the very best of us to serve in our time of need. And it is your turn to honor your oath, to ensure that you serve the American people and the Constitution."

          The regime's reliance at first on federalizing the State National Guards may become its Achilles heel, a terrible mistake that leads to its eventual downfall.  So using the words of ASO or words like them, we will tell the citizen-soldiers among us, most of whom are far from home and unwilling to be here at this time and in this place which is not their home:  "We look to you, we count on you in times of crisis, and today we ask you to stand in solidarity with us and ensure that we can make this a place where we protect our freedoms, our families, and our futures."

          Protect our freedoms.

          That is what we will do.  That is what we will say.  And we will hope.  Not because we know that the outcome will be good.  But because what is to come has not yet been decided.   And we can help to decide the outcome.

A version of this article was published on Substack.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2025 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.  Interested in many things including Claims and Issues?  There's more on my Substack newsletter.