For the second time in three months, Houston plaintiffs' attorney Eric B. Dick has awarded more than $100,000 to an insurance company that filed a “frivolous and baseless” lawsuit that was “solely intended to harass.” was ordered.
Galveston County District Court Judge Kelly L. Neves granted summary judgment on January 23 in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Dick against Standard Casualty on behalf of plaintiffs Stephen and Jacqueline Barnes. said it was filed in bad faith. The order states that Dick & Dick Law Firm has provided admissible evidence that Standard breached its insurance contract with the Burns for damages the plaintiffs claim they sustained during the 2021 winter storm Uri. It is stated that it could not be submitted.
“[The] The court finds that there is no evidentiary support for any of the claims asserted by the plaintiffs in this action, and that the action is frivolous and brought for an improper purpose, including causing unnecessary delay and unnecessary increase in litigation costs. “We have determined that this has been the case,” Neves wrote.
The court awarded Standard $101,671 in attorney's fees and $12,848.68 in costs to plaintiff Dick and Dick Law Firm.
The order comes just two days after Harris County Civil Court sanctioned Dick $137,000 for maliciously filing a “frivolous” and “baseless” lawsuit against the same insurance company. It was handed down in less than a month. The court said Mr. Dick did not provide evidence that Standard owed compensation to the plaintiff property owners.
In both cases, Dick appointed expert witnesses to testify about the losses, but they either did not know they were named as experts or did not investigate the alleged damages.
“Both courts believe that Dick used the same expert on every issue without actually formally hiring an expert on a particular case,'' said Stephen Badger, a partner and defense attorney at Zell Law Firm. “I condemned Dick's approach of naming people and asking them to formulate their opinions.” The insurance company countered other lawsuits filed by Dick.
Dick did not respond to Insurance Journal's request for comment.
Anna Nguyen, a certified expert witness, has been named an expert in the Burns case. She testified that Ms. Nguyen never saw her designation nor did she approve it. “As of the date of her suspension, she did not know what her opinion would be or even what her evidence would be to support her opinion,” Neves wrote. There is.
Nguyen did not prepare a report, only an Excel spreadsheet of the damaged items. Mr. Nguyen asked the plaintiffs for photos, but he did not receive them. They were unable to provide the requested proof of ownership, the price paid for the item, the age of the item, and the requested date.
Ms. Nguyen would not testify under oath that the plaintiffs suffered a loss in replacement cost value for the amount listed in the spreadsheet ($544,131).
The court said the lawyers' failure to provide evidence to support their claims was evidence that “the suit was frivolous and baseless from its inception, and was pursued solely for the purpose of harassment.”
Mr. Badger said the sanctions order shows that the class action model adopted by Mr. Dick does not work for first-party claims.
“This requires the policyholder's attorney to actually investigate and prove their case,” Badger said. “Obviously, this is not something Dick is prepared to file a major lawsuit against.”
Mr. Dick is known in the Houston area as an aggressive plaintiff's attorney and has a history of underwriting insurance claims. Dick has a penchant for vulgar puns on billboards and TV ads with phrases like “Hire Dick” and “We'll work long and hard for you.”
Dick told the Claims Journal in November that Harris County's sanctions were “100% political.” Dick accused him of weaponizing the judicial system because Judge Lashawn Williams is a Democrat while Dick is registered as a Republican.
“This is what corrupt judges do,” Dick said. “This is the same way they're doing it with Donald Trump.”
Dick is accused of violating campaign finance laws while running for Harris County Treasurer in 2022. In September, the Texas Board of Elections ordered him to pay a $10,000 civil penalty for failing to report $151,166 in campaign spending for his treasurer campaign.
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