James B. Lunsford Regina T. Charboneau Bay Vista Enterprises, Inc. v. American Guarantee & Liability Insurance Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that, under California coverage law, “malicious prosecution” in an insurance policy covers “abuse of process” claims because this term is ambiguous, given that a layperson’s understanding would differ from the legal definition of the term
• observing that “California courts have not yet considered whether ‘malicious prosecution’ coverage includes actions for abuse of process[.]”
• finding insurer entitled to judgment on bad faith claim because refusal to defend based on reasonable construction of policy
• noting courts have analyzed claims together based on 19 similarity of elements
• “Because [the insurer] investigated the insureds’ claim and based its refusal to defend on that information and a reasonable construction of the policy, [the insurer] did not act in bad faith....”
• “[T]he distinction between malicious prosecution and abuse of process is at best unclear.” (internal quotation marks omitted)

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).