Institutional Bad Faith and Written Discovery

1) Institutional Bad faith Defined
a) Simple Bad Faith
b) Institutional Bad Faith
c) Characteristics
2) Main Focus of Institutional Bad Faith
a) Company Policies and Procedures
b) Company Incentive Plans
3) Objectives of Policyholder Counsel
a) Show Evil Intent
b) Show Grand Scheme
c) Redirect Focus to Practices rather than Actual
Claim
4) Discovery
a) Scale
b) Disclosure
5) Early Warning Signs

1) Tactical Purpose of Institutional Claims
a) Punitive Damages
b) Discoverable and
Admissible Evidence
2) Punitive Damages
a) Hughes v. Blue Cross
b) Downey v. Ohio Casualty
3) Discoverable and Admissible Evidence
a) Smith v. Allstate
b) Hawkins v. Allstate
4) Potential Limitations
a) Private Right v. Consumer Protection
b) Regional Limitations

1) Nuisance Value Settlement Problem
a) Example Problem
b) Definition
c) Practical Impact
2) Organizing for Discovery
a) Illustration
b) Scope
c) Timing
d) Preparation
3) Centralization
a) Problem Defined
b) Advantages
c) Treatment

1) Reasonableness
a) Issues
i) Managing Expectations
ii) Limiting Scope
b) Abusive Discovery
c) Economics of Discovery
d) Total Loss Explained
i) Requirement no complete obliteration
ii) Remnants test
iii) Legal definition
2) Managing Internal Expectations
a) Obligations
b) Accepting Scope
c) Test of Admissibility
3) Preparation
a) documentation
b) responsible person(s)
i) State Farm v. Engelke
ii) IT Staff
4) Limiting Scope
a) Seeking Limitations
b) Parameters
c) Examples
d) Protective Orders
5) Consistency
a) Considerations
b) Informal Discovery
i) Examples
ii) Definition
iii) Purpose

1) Discovery Defined
2) Example Scenario
a) Request for Electronic
Files
b) Independent Adjuster
Records
c) Missing Records
d) Court Response
3) Adverse Inference Instruction
a) defined
b) impact on litigation
4) Litigation Hold Letter
a) Defined
b) Purpose
c) Relation to record retention
policy
d) Recipients
e) Timing
f) Preservation Letter
5) Zubulake v. USB Warburg
a) Importance in e-descovery

b) Facts
6) Electronic Discovery
a) Record types
b) Portable Media types
c) Electronic Storage
Devices
d) Deletion
7) Spoliation
a) Defined
b) Zubulake V

1) Oral Directives and Discovery
a) Insufficiency
b) Zubulake Example
2) Scope of Responsibility
a) Understanding Document
Retention Policies
b) Communicating with
Information Technology Staff
c) Continuing Obligations
3) Keyword Searches
4) Suspension of Auto-purge processes
5) Trigger for Preservation Duty
a) reasonable anticipation of
litigation
b) unreasonable
approaches
c) insufficient trigger
d) examples
6) Preservation Notices
a) Writing Requirement
b) Recipients
c) Refinement
7) Updated Federal Rules
a) Rule 16
b) Rule 26