Henley v. Safeco Insurance Company of America
- Richard Seeborg
- 3:21-cv-04243
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Henley v. Safeco Insurance Company of America, Judge Seeborg ordered Eva Jo Henley to produce fee documents, with limited redactions, after she sought fees as damages.
Eva Jo Henley must produce the specified fee agreement and billing records to Safeco Insurance Company of America, subject to limited redactions; Safeco receives the required discovery.
What happened
In Henley v. Safeco Insurance Company of America, Eva Jo Henley sued Safeco over the alleged wrongful denial of insurance benefits. She sought attorney-fee damages under California law for fees incurred to obtain policy benefits.
Safeco asked the court to require Henley to provide an unredacted fee agreement and related billing records. The court ruled that Henley had placed those documents at issue by seeking those fees and therefore could not claim blanket attorney-client privilege over them.
Judge Seeborg ordered Henley to produce the documents to Safeco by May 9, 2022. She may redact provisions and billing entries unrelated to the fees she seeks as contract damages, but may not redact entries for time included in that claim.
The detailed version
- Henley v. Safeco Insurance Company of America · No. 3:21-cv-04243
- Richard Seeborg
- May 2, 2022
Background
This was a breach-of-contract and tort case concerning Safeco's alleged wrongful denial of insurance policy benefits. Safeco requested an order compelling Eva Jo Henley to produce an unredacted fee agreement with her lawyer and related billing records.
Henley claimed attorney's fees under Brandt v. Superior Court as part of her tort damages. Under that rule, fees reasonably incurred to force payment of insurance benefits may be recovered if the insurer acted in bad faith. The recoverable fees are limited to work seeking the rejected policy payment; fees for obtaining damages beyond the policy limit or other tort damages are not recoverable.
The court's ruling
The court agreed with Safeco that Henley had put the requested documents at issue by seeking Brandt fees. It overruled Henley's blanket claim of attorney-client privilege over the fee agreement and billing records. The court ruled that billing records showing the hours, rates, and work descriptions attributable to establishing policy benefits, along with any fee-agreement terms affecting the Brandt-fee calculation, were not protected from disclosure on the asserted privilege grounds.
The court ordered Henley to produce the fee agreement and billing records to Safeco by May 9, 2022. Henley may minimally redact fee-agreement provisions unrelated to calculating Brandt fees. She may also redact billing entries or other material unrelated to her damages claim, including time she does not seek as contract damages. She may not redact billing entries for time she seeks to recover as damages.
Disposition
The court issued a discovery order compelling production subject to the stated limits. The order was dated May 2, 2022.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.