The Doctors Company Risk Retention Group Insurance Company (“TDC”) is an insurance company located in Napa, California. It provided a medical-malpractice insurance policy (“the policy”) to U.S. Acute Care Solutions, L.L.C. (“USACS”), a Delaware company with its principal place of business in Canton, Ohio. USACS provides emergency-care services to healthcare systems throughout the United States.
In January 2020, a patient filed a medical-malpractice lawsuit against USACS in a Connecticut state court. USACS submitted the claim to TDC, which accepted coverage under the policy and retained counsel to defend USACS’s named
insureds.
The parties disagreed on a settlement strategy during litigation of the medical-malpractice suit, and in December 2022, USACS agreed to self-fund a settlement with the claimant to avoid facing the potential risk of a verdict being rendered at trial in excess of the limits of coverage under the policy.
USACS sued TDC in March 2023 in the Stark County Court of Common Pleas in Ohio, alleging a single claim of bad-faith insurance-claim handling and seeking to recover the amount of its self-funded settlement payout in the Connecticut lawsuit, plus additional costs and fees.
The medical malpractice policy issued by TDC to USACS contained the following revised arbitration provision: “Any dispute between [USACS] and [TDC] relating to this Policy (including any disputes regarding [TDC’s] contractual obligations) will be resolved by binding arbitration in accordance with the Commercial Arbitration Rules and Mediation Procedures of the American Arbitration Association.”
The Supreme Court of Ohio was asked to resolve the following issue: whether the arbitration agreement in the
insurance policy applies to a legal dispute alleging bad-faith insurance-claim handling, which is considered a tort claim under Ohio law.
The Ohio Supreme Court stated in its November 6, 2025 Opinion: “the policy language at issue here is properly construed as a broad arbitration clause … Thus, there exists a strong presumption of arbitrability that should not be denied unless it may be said with positive assurance that the arbitration clause is not susceptible of an interpretation that covers the asserted dispute … USACS has not overcome the presumption of arbitrability in this case, because it has not identified an express exclusion or other forceful evidence that a claim for bad-faith insurance-claim handling falls outside the scope of the arbitration clause in the policy. The policy’s original arbitration clause required arbitration of “disputes regarding [TDC’s] extra-contractual obligations,” but that language was later deleted and replaced by the change endorsement providing for arbitration of any dispute relating to the policy, “including any disputes regarding [TDC’s] contractual obligations.” And nothing in the change endorsement shows an intent to expressly exclude legal disputes regarding bad-faith insurance-claim handling from arbitration. The language in the change endorsement plainly covers the legal dispute at issue here. Finally, USACS’s claim of bad-faith insurance-claim handling could not be maintained without referring to the policy or the relationship between TDC as the insurer and USACS as the insured.”
Source U.S. Acute Care Solutions, L.L.C. v. Doctors Co. Risk Retention Group Ins. Co., Slip Opinion No. 2025-Ohio-5010.
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