Jury Awards $386,008 in Williamson County UIM Case After Allstate Refused to Pay
A Williamson County jury found Barbara Burgess entitled to $386,008 in compensatory damages after her UIM carrier, Allstate, refused to pay her claim without a trial, then paid the $50,000 policy limit only after the verdict came in.
What happened
In August 2014, Barbara Burgess was injured when another driver struck her vehicle in Texas. She pursued the at-fault driver's bodily injury policy and settled for its $100,000 limit. That recovery still fell short of her total damages, so she turned to her own Allstate Fire and Casualty policy for underinsured motorist benefits.
In September 2018, Burgess demanded that Allstate pay her $50,000 UIM policy limit. Allstate refused without making any counteroffer. That refusal forced a coverage trial to establish what she was owed.
In March 2019, the case went to a jury in the 368th District Court of Williamson County. Justin Hill of Hill Law Firm, working alongside co-counsel Joshua Fogelman, presented Burgess's injuries to the panel. The jury found the other driver fully at fault and awarded Burgess $75,000 for past physical pain and $311,009 for future medical expenses, totaling $386,008 in compensatory damages.
After the verdict was returned but before the trial court signed the final judgment, Allstate paid Burgess the $50,000 policy limit plus interest. The trial court then entered judgment and subsequently granted Allstate summary judgment on Burgess's bad-faith and Insurance Code claims, concluding that paying after the verdict was enough to extinguish extracontractual liability.
Burgess appealed. In November 2021, the Austin Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in No. 03-20-00088-CV. The court held that an insurer can face liability for bad faith and statutory unfair-settlement violations when it forces an insured to litigate to establish the right to collect, even if it ultimately pays in full. The case was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings on those claims.
TopVerdict ranked the 2019 jury award among the top 100 verdicts in Texas for that year, listing it at No. 87 with Hill Law Firm as trial counsel.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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