Brian J. Palmeri and Daniel P. Quinlan of Winget, Spadafora & Schwartzberg, LLP’s Stamford, Connecticut office prevailed in an appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The Plaintiff claimed that his insurance agent caused him to miss a critical payment that would have kept his life insurance policies in force resulting in the loss of $16 million in coverage.
Plaintiff asserted claims of negligence and breach of fiduciary duty against his insurance agent based on the agent’s alleged failure to advise Plaintiff to remit his premium payment on his flexible premium universal life insurance policies. Following discovery, we moved for summary judgment on Plaintiff’s claims. We argued in our motion that under New York law an insurance agent did not breach his duties to Plaintiff, who had delegated his insurance matters to others. We demonstrated that Plaintiff had a complicated and risky system for paying his insurance premiums. He entrusted the matter to a corporate entity that routinely ignored the premium reminder notices and waited until the policy provisionally lapsed before paying the minimum amount necessary to keep the policy in force. Ultimately, Plaintiff and his agents allowed the policy to terminate, and they were unable to reinstate coverage. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment in favor of the agent.
The Plaintiff appealed to the Second Circuit claiming that the district court improperly resolved disputed factual issues, which should have been reviewed by a jury. The Second Circuit rejected that argument and affirmed judgment for our client.
Brian Palmeri and Daniel Quinlan are partners in the Stamford office of Winget, Spadafora & Schwartzberg, LLP. They routinely defend agents and other financial professionals with respect to complex products. They can be reached at palmeri.b@wssllp.com and quinlan.d@wssllp.com.
