Johnson v. Tennessee Farmers Mutual Insurance Co.

I dissent from so much of the Court’s opinion as affirms the Court of Appeals’ reversal of the trial judge’s award of a ten percent “bad faith” penalty.

The majority ignores the correct standard of review and, in so doing, falls into the same error as was committed by the Court of Appeals of substituting its judgment for that of the trial judge. Sec. 27-303, T.C.A. provides that in “[a]ll cases tried in a court of record without the intervention of a jury”, the hearing in the appellate court “shall be de novo upon the record of the trial court, accompanied by a presumption of the correctness…