Mark Goldberg v. Pacific Indemnity Company

MEMORANDUM

Plaintiffs appeal several issues decided by the district court, namely: (1) the district court’s grant of defendants’ motion for summary judgment on plaintiffs’ bad faith claim; (2) the content of certain jury instructions given by the district court on plaintiffs’ breach of contract claim and the sufficiency of the evidence supporting those instructions; and (3) the district court’s grant of attorneys’ fees to defendants. Given the parties’ familiarity with the facts, we do not fully recount them here except as necessary to explain our decision. This court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . For the following reasons, we affirm.

I. The District Court Did Not Err by Granting Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment on Plaintiffs’ Bad Faith Claim

Plaintiffs argue that the district court improperly granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment on plaintiffs’ bad faith claim. Plaintiffs allege that there was sufficient evidence in the record for a reasonable juror to find that defendants acted in bad faith by: (1) refusing to raze and rebuild plaintiffs’ house, which plaintiffs argue was not a fairly debatable assessment of plaintiffs’ insurance claim; and (2)…