Fifth Circuit hears oral arguments heard in Broussard v. State Farm

With the continuing drama of the Scruggs scandal unfolding daily, sometimes hourly, I almost forgot to blog about the Katrina case that I have written about perhaps more than any other -- Broussard v. State Farm. As this story by Mike Kunzelman of the AP says, oral arguments were held before the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on State Farm's appeal of the $1 million punitive damage award -- reduced by Judge L.T. Senter Jr. from $2.5 million awarded by the jury. Broussard is not about the anti-concurrent cause provisions of policies, as some of the other well-known cases have been, it is about who is allocated the burden of proof of damages, and it is about whether bad faith punitive damages are justified when an insurer fails to pay when some small amount of covered damage may have oc