Background
Carl Fogel was injured in a bicycle collision with a truck driven by John Catalano. Fogel requested policy information from Catalano’s insurer, Shelter Mutual Insurance Company. Shelter held four policies for Catalano but initially provided only a copy of the policy for the truck involved in the accident. Fogel sued for the statutory penalty for the failure to disclose the other three policies. The district court granted summary judgment to Fogel, awarding a penalty of thirty-five thousand six hundred dollars and attorney fees. Both parties appealed.
The court’s reasoning
The court held that under Colorado law, the phrase policies that are or may be relevant to the claim unambiguously requires insurers to produce full copies of all known policies that could potentially provide coverage, not just excerpts. The court relied on the Colorado Court of Appeals decision in Bohanan v. Esurance Property & Casualty Insurance to support this interpretation. Regarding the penalty, the court found that the statute authorizes only one penalty per claim, not one penalty for each unanswered request. The court also determined that Shelter’s July two thousand twenty-two letter, which contained excerpts rather than full copies, did not constitute substantial compliance with the disclosure statute.
What it means going forward
Insurers in Colorado must now provide complete copies of all relevant policies upon request to avoid statutory penalties. The ruling clarifies that penalties accrue on a per-claim basis, limiting exposure for multiple requests related to the same incident, while ensuring claimants receive full policy documents rather than summaries.
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