INSURANCE-RELATED COURT CASES
Digested from case reports published online
COURT DECISIONS
Don’t litigate, arbitrate!
U.S. Acute Care Solutions, L.L.C. (USACS) is a healthcare company that provides emergency care services. Its clients, various healthcare providers, are located throughout the United States. USACS had a medical malpractice liability policy from The Doctors Company Risk Retention Group Insurance Company (TDC) at the time of a claim.
USACS was sued for malpractice in January 2020 and the TDC policy was in force. USACS successfully filed a claim in which TDC began providing a defense.
Later, USACS and TDC could not agree on the approach they should use to settle the claim. Fearing the possibility of being handed a judgment in excess of the medical malpractice policy limit, USACS chose to fund a settlement on its own. The company eventually settled the claim out of its own pockets.
USACS’s next move? It sued TDC, alleging that the insurer handled their claim in bad faith.
TDC believed that resorting to litigation was not the next step. It filed a motion asking the trial court to force USACS to use their policy’s arbitration provision to settle their dispute. USACS sought an appeal after the lower court ruled in favor of TDC.
The higher court spent much of its time reviewing relevant court cases, including one that USACS offered in support of its position. Specifically, the emergency services provider argued that a bad faith claim was not subject to arbitration and asked that the lawsuit be allowed to proceed.
Of particular importance to the litigation was that the medical malpractice policy included a provision on arbitration that had been revised. TDC’s original provision stated that the insurer and the policyholder were obligated to arbitrate any disputes between the parties. It specifically mentioned that disputes under any extra-contractual obligations involving USACS were also subject to the provision. Later, TDC issued a “Change Endorsement Binding Arbitration” form. It operated as an immediate replacement of the original provision.
The replacement binding arbitration agreement’s most significant change is that it referred to contractual obligations held by USACS rather than extra-contractual obligations. The lower court ruled in favor of TDC based upon the replacement provision.
The higher court shared its opinion that their state’s laws leaned heavily towards the use of arbitration when it is available as an option. In parsing the arbitration language among the original and replacement provisions and review of several other cases involving arbitration, the court came to a decision.
In the end, the court believed that the question of TDC possibly acting in bad faith was definitely connected to the overall insurance contract. It then ruled that the matter was subject to the policy’s arbitration provision. The district court decision was reversed, reinstating the trial court decision for the dispute between USACS and TDC to go through arbitration.
U.S. Acute Care Solutions, L.L.C. v. The Doctors Company Risk Retention Group Insurance Company—Slip Opinion—No. 2025-Ohio-5010—November 6, 2025.
