Practice Areas: Insurance Defense, Civil Litigation
Additional Information: Defending business clients in a hostile jurisdiction is the hallmark of Kay Fuller’s practice. Since joining the firm in 1990, Ms. Fuller, a shareholder of the firm, has concentrated her practice on the defense of insurers in coverage and extra-contractual matters at trial and appeal. Ms. Fuller has successfully tried a number of “bad faith” cases in West Virginia and also provides coverage counsel. She also actively litigates administrative matters and chairs the firm’s litigation department.
She is presently involved in litigating issues of first impression ranging from privacy rights to discovery of attorney-client privileged materials in claim files. She regularly defends institutional attacks against insurance carriers wherein punitive damages are sought and provides risk management and litigation strategies to clients to defeat such broad-based attacks. Ms. Fuller provides counsel to insurers on a regional and national level and is sought after as a speaker on insurance-related topics.
Ms. Fuller successfully represented Allstate Insurance Company twice before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals wherein the Court recognized the attorney-client privilege in first and third party “bad faith” cases in State ex rel. Allstate v Madden and State ex rel. Allstate v Gaughan, respectively. She was also trial and appellate counsel in Costello v Allstate wherein the Court addressed for the first time the doctrine of reasonable expectations to insurance agents. She was also appellate counsel to Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in Martino v Barnett, where West Virginia was the first jurisdiction to consider application of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act to private information contained in claim files. She also served as appellate counsel to State Farm in Strum v Swanson and State Farm which limited the type of damages recoverable in wrongful death claims.
She also successfully argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on the issue of whether a first-party claimant substantially prevailed against his insurer in Jones v Allstate and was instrumental in prohibiting the admissibility of hedonic damages in West Virginia in Wilt v Buracker, the leading case in the nation prohibiting such evidence in civil trials.
Ms. Fuller has authored articles and lectures extensively before local, regional and home offices of insurance carriers, agents and practitioners in the area of insurance, “bad faith” and discovery, as well as application of the Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act. She has also been recognized as an expert witness in the field of insurance “bad faith.”
Ms. Fuller is licensed to practice in all state and federal courts in West Virginia and Virginia as well as the Supreme Court of the United States. She was awarded membership in the Order of Barristers while attending the West Virginia University College of Law and was recently recognized as a “Super Lawyer” in the fields of civil litigation defense and appellate advocacy in West Virginia.
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