Case Citator › Employers Casualty Co. v. Block

Employers Casualty Co. v. Block

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Criticized by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of Texas
Citation
744 S.W.2d 940
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
44 of 44
Citing cases (total)
44
Treatment dates
1996
Criticized by some courts
At least one reviewed court has criticized this case’s reasoning. No reviewed court has overruled it. The Texas Supreme Court disapproved Block's suggestion that an agreed judgment reached without an adversarial trial could bind the insurer on damages. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Gandy expressly called that suggestion dictum; its treatment is listed below.
More on how this was screened

Block's separate rule requiring an insured to prove coverage continues to be applied. All 44 flagged citations were read. Many later opinions describe Block as overruled in part by Gandy, but that language reports Gandy's act. Gandy itself disapproved a suggestion it called dictum, so this record uses criticized rather than an overruling label. The citing-opinion count uses the 44-citation floor available locally because Block is absent from the authority-count table.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

44 later cases cite Employers Casualty Co. v. Block; 44 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

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Treatments

Criticized

  • The Texas Supreme Court disapproved Block's dictum that an agreed judgment could bind an insurer on damages despite the absence of a fully adversarial trial.

    State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Gandy · Supreme Court of Texas · filed

    In no event, however, is a judgment for plaintiff against defendant, rendered without a fully adversarial trial, binding on defendant’s insurer or admissible as evidence of damages in an action against defendant’s insurer by plaintiff as defendant’s assignee. We disapprove the contrary suggestion in dicta in Employers Casualty Company v. Block, 744 S.W.2d 940, 943 (Tex.1988), and United States Aviation Underwriters, Inc. v. Olympia Wings, Inc., 896 F.2d 949, 954 (5th Cir.1990).
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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