Jury orders insurer to pay over $7 million to Southwestern Seminary

A jury has ruled that an insurer must pay Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary $7.1 million after it tried to deny coverage to the seminary for the Jane Roe lawsuit.

In 2019, a former student identified under the alias "Jane Roe" sued the Texas seminary and its former President Paige Patterson, accusing them of failing to properly respond when she was allegedly sexually assaulted on campus.

Earlier this month, the jury decided that Hanover Insurance must pay SWBTS for refusing to cover the seminary during its litigation with Roe. Hanover is expected to appeal the decision.

“For more than a decade, Southwestern Seminary paid The Hanover Insurance Company millions of dollars in premiums for the very protection it would later need,” said Michael D. Anderson, legal counsel for the seminary, in a statement provided to Baptist Press. “When that moment came, Hanover chose to fight against the institution it had been paid to defend.”

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