FORT WORTH (BP) – A jury has ruled in favor of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary after the seminary’s insurance carrier attempted to deny coverage connected to the Jane Roe suit.
The bulk of the award – $5 million – came because the jury found Hanover knowingly committed its actions to deny Southwestern appropriate coverage.
Jane Roe is the pseudonym for the former SWBTS student who filed against the seminary and its former president, Paige Patterson, in 2019 for “bodily injury” and “personal and advertising injury.”
In a motion for partial summary judgment, filed in January 2024, SWBTS attorneys put forward that Hanover Insurance elected not to provide a “complete” defense. Instead, the company tried to assert non-existent rights to allocation and reimbursement, in effect, ignoring coverage from a 2018-2019 policy and giving Southwestern what seminary attorneys called “a vague and amorphous extra-contractual ‘pro-rata defense.’”
On the eve of the trial, Hanover amended its reservation of rights letter and denied coverage to all but one of Roe’s claims. In August 2022, Hanover told SWBTS it would reject any potential indemnity coverage for claims covering defamation in Roe’s Third Amended Complaint.
Southwestern posited that Hanover’s steps created a conflict of interest where the seminary couldn’t control its own defense, an arrangement through which Hanover used privileged information to deny coverage in its August 2022 communication.
Last July, Judge Megan Fahey ruled that Hanover had violated Chapter 541 of the Texas Insurance Code. On May 7, a jury delivered a $7.1 million ruling in favor of Southwestern.
“For more than a decade, Southwestern Seminary paid The Hanover Insurance Company millions of dollars in premiums for the very protection it would later need,” said Michael D. Anderson, legal counsel for the seminary and partner at Kelly Hart. “When that moment came, Hanover chose to fight against the institution it had been paid to defend.
“After more than three years of litigation, a Tarrant County jury has now delivered a decisive verdict for Southwestern Seminary, finding that Hanover acted unfairly toward the Seminary and that it did so knowingly. We are grateful to the jurors and now pray for a swift conclusion, one that makes the Seminary whole and allows it to continue the work to which God has called it.”
Southwestern obtained general liability insurance coverage from Hanover on Feb. 5, 2014, renewed in one-year increments. In March 2019, Jane Roe filed her lawsuit against Southwestern and Patterson. Claims against both parties were dismissed in April 2023, with Roe appealing a year later and the Texas Supreme Court ultimately getting involved. A district court judge upheld Southwestern’s dismissal from the case last December, though another appeal could affect that status.
Hanover is expected to appeal the recent jury ruling.
Related posts:
SWBTS to vote on presidential nominee Feb. 26-27 
TRUSTEES: ‘It’s a new day,’ SWBTS affirms 
FIRST-PERSON: Convictional cooperation and confessional commitments 
Bradford appointed dean of Texas Baptist College 
FROM THE SEMINARIES: Felix Cabrera joins SWBTS Hispanic Programs; Eric Smith joins SBTS faculty 
Southwestern Seminary community sees answers to prayer during 2023 
SBC DIGEST: WMU provides free books; SWBTS revises doctoral program 
SWBTS ‘moving forward’ despite ‘certain events’
