Duty to cooperate
Q: " I was sued last year and my insurance company is defending me. The lawsuit involves 1 appraisal I did in 2007. The borrowers who are suing me say that I conspired with the bank to inflate values and they asked me to give them copies of every appraisal I ever did for this bank. My attorney went to court to fight this, but the judge said I have to give them copies of every appraisal I did for the bank in 2007. I know that is a lot less then what they wanted originally but I don't have the time to go through my records and find these appraisals. Then I have to get them out of storage and copy them. This is ridiculous. Who is going to pay me for my time to do this?"
A: I sympathize with you. Lawsuits are frustrating on so many levels and you don’t know how tough they can be until you are actually sued and have to go through litigation. Your defense counsel did the best he could to fight this “fishing expedition” but sometimes judges make decisions we don’t agree with. Whether we agree with them or not we have to obey those rulings, which means you have to get those appraisals together so they can be turned over to the other side. I am sure your defense counsel will do whatever he can to help. Maybe you can dig out the files and someone from counsel’s office can actually do the copying? No matter how frustrating and time consuming it is, you have a duty to cooperate under the terms of your policy.