Foremost Ins. Co. v. Parham

Summary

The Supreme Court of Alabama conditionally affirmed jury verdicts for two sets of insureds who bought mobile home homeowner's policies through an unlicensed dealer agent, holding the evidence sufficient to submit their misrepresentation and suppression claims and that the claims were neither time-barred nor waived under the then-governing standards. The Court overruled Hickox v. Stover and Hicks v. Globe Life, restoring the 'reasonable reliance' standard for fraud actions in all cases filed after March 14, 1997, while applying the prior Hicks accrual rule to this case. It rejected Foremost's new-trial arguments (juror qualification, cumulative error, weight of the evidence), declared the compensatory awards constitutionally excessive, and capped punitive damages under Green Oil and BMW v. Gore at $60,500 per plaintiff on misrepresentation and $114,500/$112,500 on suppression, conditioned on the plaintiffs' acceptance of remittiturs. Justices Almon, Shores, and See concurred specially, Justice Cook concurred in the result, and Justice Butts dissented from the return to reasonable reliance and the punitive-damages analysis.