To settle or not to settle: that is the question for liability insurers. If you are pondering whether you must accept a plaintiff’s settlement offer, read on. A recent Illinois case, Huang v. Brenson, 7 N.E.3d 729 (Ill. App. Ct. 2014), may shed some light.
Plaintiff John Z. Huang represented Yongping Zhou in a deportation suit. Mid-suit, Zhou terminated the representation and retained another attorney. Throughout the course of the litigation, Zhou hired several more attorneys and ultimately succeeded in vacating his domestic violence conviction after spending two years in an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center. Zhou then sued Huang for legal malpractice.
Huang’s professional liability insurer retained defendant Ian Brenson to defend Huang in the malpractice suit. At trial, the jury awarded Zhou $4 million. Huang terminated Brenson and retained two new attorneys for post-trial proceedings. The appellate court held that the trial court had made an error — Zhou should have been prohibited from recovering damages for emotional distress — and reversed and remanded the case with instructions to enter judgment in favor of Huang. In December 2010, Huang filed the instant case against Brenson, claiming he had committed legal malpractice while defending Huang in the Zhou action.
The circuit court dismissed Huang’s case, and the Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Third Division affirmed. First, the appellate court rejected Huang’s legal...
