Bradley v. United Specialty Insurance Company

Background

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation considered whether to centralize lawsuits involving insurance policies purchased with seasonal or multi-day ski passes. The policies covered passes associated with Vail and Alterra resorts, which closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuits alleged that the insurers wrongfully denied policyholders’ claims after the closures.

The Bradley action was pending in the Eastern District of Arkansas and involved United Specialty Insurance Company (USIC). The Panel identified other actions involving USIC in the Eastern District of Arkansas, the Northern District of California, and the District of Colorado. USIC, its broker Beecher Carlson Insurance Services, LLC, and claims processor American Claims Management Inc. were collectively referred to as the USIC defendants.

Panel’s Analysis

The Panel denied the request to create a single, industry-wide multidistrict proceeding combining claims against USIC and Arch Insurance Company. It found that the insurers were separate businesses, sold different policies covering different ski-pass programs, and were not alleged to have conspired. The Panel concluded that combining the claims would likely complicate rather than streamline pretrial proceedings.

The Panel determined that separate, defendant-specific proceedings were appropriate. It found common factual issues among the USIC actions and concluded that centralization would eliminate duplicative discovery, reduce inconsistent pretrial rulings—especially concerning class certification—and conserve the parties’ and courts’ resources.

Order

The Panel ordered that centralization of the actions listed on Schedules A and B in a single docket was DENIED. It ordered that the Schedule B actions pending outside the Northern District of California—including Bradley—be transferred to the Northern District of California and assigned to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings with the USIC action already pending there. The Panel also renamed the Schedule B litigation as In re: United Specialty Insurance Company Ski Pass Insurance Litigation and designated it MDL No. 2975. The order addressed pretrial coordination and did not decide whether the insurance claims were legally valid.