Posted On: July 9, 2007, 8:26 pm CDT

Posted By: wudchuck

According to the plaintiff's attorney, Robert Mongeluzzi of Saltz Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesk, Princeton Insurance Co. has agreed to the $20 million in mediation of a bad faith claim filed in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

Princeton did not admit liability in the settlement, Mongeluzzi said.

The $20 million is in addition to the $1 million Princeton was previously required to pay under the limits on the tavern's $1 million insurance policy after it lost its appeals on the dram shop case.

A jury awarded Tuski, who was 31 at the time of the crash, $75 million, an award that a judge later cut in half. But that large award was never paid because the tavern had only $1 million in insurance.

The tavern assigned its rights to Tuski, who sued Princeton Insurance Co. for bad faith, charging that the insurer failed to negotiate a settlement within the policy's $1 million limits after the verdict.

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let's look at this again, and maybe we can get the full account of the incident in question...first of all, there is no inidication of this article that the owner of the bar was the driver of the vehicle...secondly, if you look, bad faith call is bad call!!! reason - the bar owner, wanted to assume that his claim could have been settled for under the $1 million claim. In fact the jury awarded $75 whereas the judge cut that in 1/2...so the insurance was not in bad faith because it would have paid the $1 mil...bad faith _ is in bad judgement of the drunk driver and the owner of the bar, whom really did not have enough coverage for the settlement. this is why we are so fussy as a society, we are looking for money, in this case, the owner collects $20 mil + $1 mil (how much a lawyer can get) and the remaining balance will go to the quadrapalegic and then probably the owner still has to come up with the difference pending how much is paid by the car insurance...so it was not bad faith of the insurance company because it can only settle for $1 mil...the award was for $75 mil initially -- so therefore the owner is in bad faith thinking that all claims can be resolved under an amount...that is like me having a claim where as my bi limit is only 25k and yet the person i hit has 50k of bills...the remaining 25k is out of my personal pocket...same with the bar owner...

BAD FAITH --- NO WAY!!

BAD JUDGEMENT -- YES WAY on behalf of the jury for the amount of the settlement since there probably was not enough assets by the owner or the bar itself....