A self-insured food distributor is not an insurer and therefore cannot be sued for failing to promptly pay a claim, says an appellate court in affirming a lower court ruling. The origin of the complex litigation was a January 2006 accident that occurred when Marion Bingham was struck by a motorized cart while shopping at a Shaw's Supermarket in East Boston and suffered a laceration in the area of her Achilles tendon, according to last week's ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston in Warren Bingham, as executor of the estate of Marion Bingham v.