Seventh Circuit Applies Contractual Limitation of Action Provision

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Late Filing Defeats Suit

In Waseem Daker v. State Farm Fire And Casualty Company, No. 21-3210, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit (February 3, 2023), more than a year after he suffered property damage, Waseem Daker sued State Farm Fire and Casualty Company for insurance coverage, despite knowing that his policy with State Farm required that he file suit within a year of loss. The district court granted State Farm's motion to dismiss. It ruled that the policy's provision was enforceable, and Daker's suit was time-barred.

FACTS

Daker, who had been in prison in Georgia for over a decade, maintained ownership of a home in Georgia.

Daker filed two insurance claims with State Farm for the damage to his property and State Farm denied both claims. In the denial letter, which Daker received in March 2018, State Farm alerted Daker to the provision of his insurance policy that required him to sue within one year of the dates of damage.

About two years later Daker sued in a federal court. After permitting Daker to amend his complaint three times, the district court granted State Farm's motion to dismiss it, with prejudice.

ANALYSIS

The one-year limitations provision in State Farm's policy is valid.
Daker asserted that he needed the policy to help him prepare his complaint, but his own actions refuted that assertion: He successfully prepared and filed his complaint without the promised copy of the policy, and no one has suggested that his complaint inadequately alleges breach of contract.

ZALMA OPINION

State Farm took no chances with the litigious felon, Daker, by not only denying his claims in writing and warning him - as state Regulations require - that the policy contained a one-year private limitations of action provision. His arguments failed because without the policy or the law library he filed an effective law-suit, but filed it too late. Because the District Court gave Daker three attempts to plead a viable cause of action State Farm was required to pay a great deal of money to counsel to defend the allegations and waste the time of the court, perhaps because, Daker was bored after serving ten years in prison.

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