Friday, January 15, 2010

Another Post-Koken Decision Out of Lackawanna County Uncovered

I have been advised of another post-Koken decision out of Lackawanna County in favor of third party claims and UIM claims proceeding in a consolidated fashion to trial. In a November 5, 2009 Order (without Opinion), Senior Judge Harold A. Thomson, Jr., Specially Presiding, denied Preliminary Objections seeking, in part, a severance of the claims in the case of Nehme v. Erie Insurance and Osborne, 2009-CV-4982 (Lacka. Co. Nov. 5, 2009).

I thank Attorney Paul Oven of the Moosic, PA office of Dougherty, Leventhal & Price for bringing this case to my attention.

This decision in Nehme is consistent with what has become the majority rule in the trial court decisions on this issue across the Commonwealth. It is also consistent with the other following post-Koken decisions out of Lackawanna County:

Decker v. Nationwide Ins. Co., 2008 WL 6653069, 2005-Civil-1863//2006-Civil 2119 (Lacka. Co. March 4, 2008)(Minora, J.)(consolidation permitted of bad faith action against UIM carrier and declaratory judgment action regarding coverage). See also Decker v. Nationwide, 2007 WL 6853118 (Lacka. Co. 2007).

Augustine v. Erie Ins. Exchange, 2006-Civil-416 (Lacka. Co. August 1, 2008)(Mazzoni, J.)(Motion to sever bad faith claim from UIM claim denied).

Moyer v. Harrigan and Erie Ins. Exchange, 2008-Civil-1684 (Lacka. Co. October 24, 2008)(Thomson, J. visiting judge)(Consolidation of UIM claim and claim against tortfeasor permitted).


Anyone needing a copy of any of the above decisions may contact me at dancummins@comcast.net.

I invite you to click on the Post-Koken Scorecard in the right hand column of this blog to view a number of othe post-Koken cases uncovered from around the Commonwealth.

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