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AIG Unit Tells Ninth Circuit Yahoo’s Fee Award is Excessive

February 3, 2021 | Posted in : Billing Record / Entries, Coverage of Fees, Defense Fees / Costs, Fee Allocation / Fee Apportionment, Fee Award, Fee Dispute, Fee Issues on Appeal, Fee Jurisprudence, Fees & Bad Faith, Fees & Insurance Policy, Fees Paid by Insurers, Legal Bills / Legal Costs, Practice Area: Insurance Coverage Litigation, Trial / Jury / Verdict

A recent Law 360 story by Daphne Zhang, “AIG Unit Tells 9th Circ. Yahoo’s Atty Fee Award is Excessive,” reports that an AIG subsidiary has asked the Ninth Circuit to reverse Yahoo Inc.'s award of over $600,000 in attorney fees or grant a new trial altogether, arguing that the tech giant did not present the correct recoverable amount and that the district court failed to guide a jury on how to allocate and award attorney fees.

In a brief filed, National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., said the tech giant was not able to show which portions of its legal fees were spent on bad faith claims.  The insurer asked the court to vacate a jury verdict that found it had acted in bad faith by failing to cover Yahoo's costs to defend a consolidated class action.  National Union said that California law has clearly stated that a policyholder seeking to recover attorney fees as bad faith damages may recover only fees spent on insurance coverage issues, not those incurred to litigate the bad faith claim itself.

The carrier said that Yahoo, however, lumped all legal fees together, including those relating to bad faith claims, which are not recoverable.  The company could not present the exact amount of its legal bills spent on coverage issues, which is the only portion of recoverable attorney fees that should have been awarded, it added.  Yahoo showed "large swaths of invoices with minimal, unexplained redactions,"  National Union said. The court should reverse the attorney fee award because the unrecoverable fees must be excluded from the damages calculation, it added.

The coverage dispute goes back to January 2017, when Yahoo filed suit alleging National Union had breached its policy by refusing to cover the company in several class actions accusing it of scanning customers' emails.  In October 2018, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila found that National Union largely failed to defend and indemnify Yahoo for $4 million in attorney fees that resulted from the class actions.  The judge said it was up to a jury, though, to decide whether the insurer acted in bad faith in denying coverage.

Following a five-day trial in May 2019, a jury returned a verdict finding that National Union had acted in bad faith and should foot the bill for Yahoo's attorney fees.  "The jury clearly did not perform the allocation that Yahoo neglected to perform," National Union said on Monday, adding that Yahoo's own counsel could not point out how much of the legal fees were incurred on coverage issues and what portion was spent on bad faith claims.

"The district court failed to properly instruct the jury on how to allocate, leading the jury to award 100% of the claimed fees — a plainly excessive amount," the insurer claimed.  Yahoo previously argued that it had correctly allocated the legal fees by only submitting the invoices incurred before the district court's summary judgment order that granted its coverage benefits.  National Union said that since the bad faith claims were also litigated on summary judgment, Yahoo did not conduct a proper fee allocation.  "Yahoo is not entitled to a second bite at the apple to present allocation evidence it opted not to present at trial," the carrier said.

The case is Yahoo! Inc. v. National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., case number 19-16475, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.