in a scathing decision, the court of appeal vehemently disagreed.
“overall, we see repeated instances of the blue cross team ignoring information, misinterpreting experts’ reports, and relying on the ill-informed advice of their contracted doctors to deny benefits,” wrote justice william hourigan on behalf of the three-judge panel.
“this is a pattern of misconduct that, at best, shows reckless indifference to its duty to consider the respondent’s claim in good faith and conduct a good faith investigation, and at worst, demonstrates a deliberate strategy to wrongfully deny her benefits, regardless of the evidence that demonstrated an entitlement.”
the appeal court found it was open to the jury to conclude the “systemic and deliberate misconduct” required a high punitive damages award to deter blue cross from behaving the same way in the future.
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deterrence is impossible unless the punishment is meaningful,” the judge wrote. “
it is difficult to envision how an award of anything less than $1.5 million would even garner the attention of senior executives, let alone deter future misconduct.”
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blue cross also lost its appeal of having to pay $1 million in baker’s legal fees.
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this is one of those rare cases where there has been bad faith conduct that warrants costs on this scale.”