Continental Casualty Company v. Ervin Howard, D/B/A Lafayette Components

COFFEY, Circuit Judge.

The defendant, Ervin Howard appeals a jury verdict on a counterclaim in his favor in the amount of $9,500 rather than the $379,000 Howard claimed. We affirm.

I

This litigation, in federal court under our diversity jurisdiction, arose out of the destruction by fire of the defendant’s roof-truss factory in LaFayette, Indiana in January of 1981. After investigating the cause of the fire, the insurer, Continental Casualty Company (“Continental”) concluded that the fire had been set by an arsonist, and that the circumstances surrounding the fire indicated that the owner,…