Moore

Plaintiff, Doris B. Moore, sued defendant American United Life Insurance Company (AUL) for breach of a contract to provide disability benefits and “bad faith” denial of benefits. After 40 days of trial, a jury awarded plaintiff $30,000 compensatory damages and $2.5 million punitive damages. Pursuant to a stipulation that “the issue” of damages in the form of attorney fees would be tried to the court without a jury, the court awarded plaintiff an additional $843,333.33. Defendant appeals.

In this published portion of our opinion (see Cal. Rules of Court, rule 976.1), we address issues related to evidentiary rulings, instructions, punitive damages, and whether attorney’s fees are recoverable where the contract contains no attorney’s fees clause. We affirm that portion of the judgment awarding plaintiff damages. However, we conclude attorney’s fees are not recoverable and reverse that award. To the extent our prior opinion in Dinkins v. American National Ins. Co. (1979) 92 Cal.App.3d 222 [ 154 Cal.Rptr. 775 ] suggests attorney’s fees are properly recoverable, we disapprove it.

In an unpublished portion of this opinion we address defendant’s remaining contentions that do…