Jordan

Mary Ann Jordan, plaintiff and appellant, seeks reversal of a judgment entered in favor of respondent Allstate Insurance Company (Allstate) on her complaint for breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing and declaratory relief. The issue presented to us is whether Jordan has a viable claim for .breach of the implied covenant; after the trial court granted Allstate’s motion for summary adjudication of that issue, Jordan dismissed her other two causes of action so that an appealable judgment could be entered.

While we agree with the trial court and Allstate that the insurer’s interpretation of the language of its policy which led to its original denial of Jordan’s claim was reasonable, it does not follow that Allstate’s resulting claim denial can be justified in the absence of a full, fair and thorough investigation of all of the bases of the claim that was presented. Jordan, in her opposition to Allstate’s summary adjudication motion, has raised several triable issues of fact with respect to the adequacy of Allstate’s investigation of her claim and thus the summary disposition of her bad faith claim was not appropriate. We will…