Churning the already choppy seas of Insurance Code damages case law, the Dallas Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas recently issued an opinion in Charla G. Aldous PC and Charla Aldous v. Teresa Lugo and Darwin National Assurance Company, supporting the Fifth Circuit’s so-called “independent injury requirement.” 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159684 (N.D. Tex. Nov. 12, 2014).

The pendulum seems to always swing to the left and right before it balances somewhere in the middle. For those who are old enough to remember the meteoric rise of insurance bad faith claims in the late 1980s, decisions issued in the latter part of the 1990s and beyond seemed to signal a near-anaphylactic reluctance by Texas courts to hold any insurer responsible for its conduct.