- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
I'm not sure if it's novel, but it was certainly inventive on Thiel's part to fail to trigger the defendant's insurance, specifically for the purpose of vengefully fucking them.
However, it's not novel to do the opposite at all. Generally, a plaintiff wants to trigger the defendant's insurance, because then they get to deal with an insurance company pragmatically weighing odds and then settling, rather than a possibly combative defendant.
The pleading tactic here was pleading that the tort in question was entirely intentional. Insurance companies generally do not defend against intentional torts. It is not their job to do that. You get liability insurance to cover for your own inadvertently negligent acts. They're not there to cover for you deliberately illegally harming someone else. They bow out when that is the issue.
Another advantage to pleading intentional torts is that if you're dealing with a shitty defendant who will just declare bankruptcy when they lose and then laugh at you, is that intentional torts are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. So if you really want to ruin someone, make sure to get them on an intentional tort, rather than a negligent one.
