Cincinnati Insurance Company v. Jacob Rieger & Co., LLC, No. 21-3298 (8th Cir. 2023)
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Five months after being sued in Oregon for trademark infringement, Jacob Rieger & Co., LLC provided notice to its liability insurer, Cincinnati Insurance Company. Due to Rieger’s delay, Cincinnati refused to reimburse Rieger’s legal fees for the five months that Cincinnati was unaware of the lawsuit. The Oregon case was ultimately dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Instead of waiting to be sued in a court that did have jurisdiction, Rieger’s parent company, GSP Licensing LLC, filed a new suit in Missouri as the plaintiff. GSP was not named under Rieger’s insurance policy, so Cincinnati denied coverage for the Missouri case. Cincinnati then filed this lawsuit, seeking a declaration of coverage. The district court granted summary judgment to Cincinnati.
The Eighth Circuit reversed in part the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Cincinnati. The court affirmed the dismissal of Rieger’s tort claims and the imposition of sanctions. The court explained that under Missouri law, a tort claim is independent of a contract claim if the tort claim can succeed without regard to the outcome of the contract claim. In other words, the tort claim could succeed regardless of the outcome of the contract claim. Here, Rieger admits that its tort claims would fail if its contract claim succeeded. By Rieger’s own admission, the court found that the district court properly dismissed Rieger’s tort claims.
Court Description: [Kobes, Author, with Loken and Benton, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Insurance. Under Missouri law, the failure of an insured to provide timely notice to the insurer is treated as an affirmative defense, and prejudice to the insurer is not presumed from the mere fact of an insured's delay in giving notice; here, the district court erred by failing to treat prejudice as an affirmative defense, and the grant of summary judgment is reversed; in the suit filed in Missouri by the insured's parent company, the parent company was not a named insured, and Cincinnati was not liable to provide coverage; under Missouri law, the district court properly dismissed the insured's tort claims against Cincinnati as a contract remedy was available, and the tort claims were not independent of the contract claims; sanctions order against Cincinnati for failure to comply with discovery order is affirmed.
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