 First, the insurance carrier usually has a duty to defend a claim (or lawsuit) even if some or most of the lawsuit is not covered by the insurance policy.Unless the policy is expressly structured so that defense costs "eat away" at the policy limits (a so-called "self-consuming," "wasting" or "burning limits" policy), the default rule is that the insurer must cover all defense costs regardless of the actual limit of coverage.In one of the most famous decisions of his career (involving Jerry Buss's bad faith lawsuit against Transamerica), Justice Stanley Mosk wrote