The Beaumont Court of Appeals has granted an insurer’s petition for writ of mandamus vacating a trial court order denying its motion to bifurcate a trial arising from a dispute over property damage allegedly caused by a hurricane.
In re Covington Specialty Insurance Company and Jose Rochin (No. 09-25-00507-CV; January 6, 2026) arose from a dispute between an Orange County church and an insurer over a property damage claim arising from Hurricane Laura. The church sued the insurer and its adjuster, alleging breach of contract and various extracontractual claims. It sought damages for the amount of the claim, plus interest, attorney’s fees, and mental anguish, as well as treble and punitive damages. Defendants filed a motion for bifurcated trial to separate the coverage and extracontractual claims. The trial court denied the motion. Defendants filed a petition for writ of mandamus and a motion for temporary relief from a January 12, 2026 trial date.
In a per curiam opinion, the court of appeals granted relief. As the court observed, the problem with trying coverage and extracontractual claims together is that “[a]n insurer may be unfairly prejudiced by having to defend the contract claims at the same time and before the same jury that would consider evidence that the insurer had offered to settle the entire dispute.” Liberty Nat’l Fire Ins. Co. v. Akin, 927 S.W.2d 627, 630 (Tex. 1996) (orig. proceeding). That potential prejudice stems from the fact that the insurer would have to introduce evidence of a settlement offer in response to a bad faith claim “to the detriment of [its] right to exclude such information from the trial of a breach of contract claim” (citations omitted). Consequently, “the trial court must either grant a defendant’s motion for separate trials or sever the two causes of action and abate the extracontractual claims.”
The court rejected the church’s contention that bifurcation (or severance and abatement as well) only applies in UM/UIM cases. Observing that SCOTX has held that plaintiffs who did not bring any contractual claims for UM/UIM benefits still had “to establish that they were entitled to policy benefits before proceeding with their bad faith claims,” the court stated that “it remains clear that regardless of the type of insurance involved, a plaintiff without independent injury must establish entitlement to policy benefits in order to recover bad faith damages.” In re State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 629 S.W.3d 866, 873 (Tex. 2021) (orig. proceeding). In that case, the court concluded, bifurcation would preserve judicial resources but, more importantly, would remedy the likely prejudice to the insurer, which wished to use certain evidence to defend the bad faith claim that would hurt their defense of the contract claim. Mandamus was thus the appropriate remedy.
