Last Tuesday, Bubba came to the office to discuss ” his litigatin’ strategy “. Always nice to have some professional help when you are in a lawsuit, huh! Well, Bubba and a few of his buddies had spent the evening before with two cases of beer and their cell phones. One thing about these boys, they can multitask. A beer in one hand and ” surf the net ” with the other! Bubba, with the aid of his buddies, had figured out the ” best plan of action ” was to march into the Wewoka Worldwide office with their shotguns and reach  ” mutually acceptable terms. ”

Bubba may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but even he knew it might not work out exactly like his buddies’ vision of the great victory. So we mainly talked about Bubba’s ” Plan B “. I was just grateful that he had a ” Plan B “. Shotguns aren’t the best way to resolve an insurance dispute. ”

Plan B ” was to counter sue Woweka Worldwide for bad faith and get ” a great big gob of them punitive damages “.  Bubba’s  idea being to make the insurance company really pay for denying his claim. ” Hitting’ em’ the pocket book ” made sense to Bubba.

Like a lot of Bubba’s ” plans “, this one wasn’t 100% on the money either. In Oklahoma, you can sue for about anything. You can sue, but it doesn’t mean you will win! A bad faith lawsuit, just like any other lawsuit, requires real evidence. Just saying in legal papers filed at the court doesn’t make it true. Bubba was mad about not being paid, but Wewoka Worldwide had some reasons for not paying, like them or not.

Some law firms will file whatever the client wants including bad faith cases. We don’t. If a case isn’t really a bad faith case, we won’t file it. I explained to Bubba the difference in a suing for ” bad faith ” versus breach of contract, or as Bubba says, ” not keepin’ yer promise “. It took a couple of hours, but Bubba finally got the point. He had a lawsuit for not paying the claim, but it was not a bad faith case. At least not a bad faith case that was going to have my name on it!