United States District Court, W.D. Arkansas, Harrison Division
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
TIMOTHY L. BROOKS UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
Currently
before the Court are:
• Plaintiffs Parker Law Firm's and Tim Parker's
Motion to Remand to State Court (Doc. 17) and Affidavit (Doc.
16) and Brief in Support (Doc. 18), Defendant The Travelers
Indemnity Company's ("Travelers") Response
(Doc. 29) and Brief (Doc. 30), and Plaintiffs' Reply
(Doc. 40) and Brief (Doc. 41);
• Travelers' Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 11) and Brief
in Support (Doc. 12), Plaintiffs' Response (Doc. 34) and
Affidavits (Docs. 31-33) and Brief (Doc. 35), and
Travelers' Reply (Doc. 50);
• Defendant PS Finance, LLC's ("PSF")
Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 26) and Brief in Support (Doc. 27),
and Plaintiffs' Response (Doc. 46) and Brief (Doc. 47);
• Plaintiffs' Motion for Leave to File Amended
Complaint (Doc. 49), PSF's Response (Doc. 58), and
Travelers' Response (Doc. 59); and
• Plaintiffs' Motion for Immediate and Permanent
Injunctive Relief Preventing PSF from Pursuing Binding
Arbitration (Doc. 51) and Brief in Support (Doc. 52),
PSF's Response (Doc. 61), and Plaintiffs' Reply (Doc.
62).
For the
reasons given below, all of Plaintiffs' motions are
DENIED, and the motions filed by Travelers
and PSF are both GRANTED.
I.
BACKGROUND
This is
the second lawsuit in this Court between these Plaintiffs,
Travelers, and PSF. In the first go-round, the Court granted
Travelers' motion to dismiss, and dismissed
Plaintiffs' complaint without prejudice. In that Opinion
and Order, this Court described the background of the first
lawsuit thus:
In early 2017, Tim Parker and the Parker Law Firm were sued
by PSF in the Richmond County Supreme Court in Staten Island,
New York. PSF, a litigation-financing company, claimed that
Mr. Parker and his law firm breached their contract, breached
the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and breached
their fiduciary duty, by failing to pay PSF settlement funds
that a Parker Law Firm client received through litigation
that PSF had financed. After being served with the lawsuit
papers, Mr. Parker delivered them to Travelers, with whom the
Parker Law Firm had an insurance policy, and asked Travelers
to provide coverage and a defense in the lawsuit. Travelers
denied this request, on the grounds that the policy does not
provide coverage for that type of event, and does not give
rise to any duty to defend against that type of claim. Near
the end of 2017, the Richmond County Supreme Court directed
the parties in that lawsuit to arbitration. For clarity, that
lawsuit and the subsequent arbitration will be referred to as
"the New York Litigation" throughout this Opinion
and Order.
Half a year after those parties were directed to arbitration,
Mr. Parker and the Parker Law Firm filed a Complaint in
this Court against Travelers and PSF. Their
Complaint asserts four causes of action against Travelers:
breach of contract, violation of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade
Practices Act ("ADTPA"), violation of the Arkansas
Insurance Code Trade Practices Act, and a request for
declaratory and injunctive relief compelling Travelers to
provide a defense to them and to pay any of PSF's claims
against them. All four of these counts concern Travelers'
denial of Mr. Parker's and his law firm's request for
coverage and defense in the New York Litigation. Essentially,
they all boil down to the same contention: that Travelers is
obligated under their insurance policy to provide coverage
and a defense, and that by refusing to do so, Travelers has
harmed them. Travelers has filed a Motion to Dismiss (Doc.
12) all of these claims against it under Fed.R.Civ.P.
12(b)(6).
Parker Law Firm v. Travelers Indem. Co., 2018 WL
3999826, at *1 (W.D. Ark. Aug. 21, 2018).
This
Court went on, first, to dismiss PSF from the case because
"the Complaint itself never seeks . . . any . .. relief
against PSF and, indeed, quite literally fails to state any
claim at all against PSF." See Id. at *2. Then
the Court conducted a much more fulsome analysis of
Plaintiffs' claims against Travelers, ultimately
concluding that Plaintiffs' insurance policy with
Travelers provided no coverage for the money that PSF sought
to recover from Mr. Parker and his law firm in the New York
Litigation, and no duty to defend Mr. Parker and his law firm
in the New York Litigation. See Id. at *2-*3.
Typically, when this Court dismisses complaints at the Rule
12(b)(6) stage for failure to state a claim, it does so
without prejudice because it may be theoretically possible
for the ...