One million dollars.

That’s the amount of sanctions a court ordered #biglaw firm Cozen O’Connor–a firm with over 900 lawyers that does a TON of insurance work– to pay after its partners apparently failed to disclose the existence of large insurance policies in a litigation matter.

The order is here: Sanctions Order

This is an INCREDIBLY high sanction amount demonstrative of the court’s CLEAR belief the #biglaw firm completely failed to do its job in the case.

This is one of the highest sanctions awards ever entered by a court.

The case is Jok v. Safelite Fulfillment in Superior Court in Washington County of Pierce, Case no. 20-2-08257.

Cozen was representing Safelite and should have disclosed two insurance policies totaling $50MM in coverage way back in 2022. But they didn’t.

Instead the case proceeded all the way to trial before the firm woke up and advised opposing counsel of a $25MM (half what they should have disclosed) the Friday before the start of trial.

INSANE mistake and completely unlawful.

Well the Court was absolutely furious with the firm and ordered an unprecedented $1MM sanction — I have never heard of a sanction award that high and the Court felt the sanction had to be that high to assure the message got through:

The “sanctions needs to be severe enough to prevent this kind of conduct in the future.”

So huge mistake by #biglaw– they also LOST the trial.