What is a Bad Faith Insurance Claim?

Even if you are not their customer, an insurance company has certain obligations to you under state law. Although every insurance company has their toolbox of tricks that they regularly use to make your life more difficult, there is such a thing as crossing the line. If they do, you can file a bad faith claim directly against the insurance company.

While you may expect insurance companies to make lowball settlement offers and try to save themselves some money, you would still expect them to make good on their obligation to pay claims when a policyholder causes damages. A bad faith claim refers to situations where an insurance company tries to avoid its legal obligations by reneging on its obligation to pay. Insurance companies can engage in bad faith by:

• Refusing to pay a claim altogether
• Delaying the payment of a claim for an unreasonable amount of time

Insurance companies can be liable in bad faith claims when they impose unreasonable obligations and hurdles on the claimant that do not actually exist in the policy. These could be requests for additional documents that were never required. Bad faith is not an inadvertent error, but is usually conscious and knowing actions to make your life far more difficult and deny you what you legally deserve.

You would file a bad faith claim under state law. The insurance company could be hit with punitive damages if a jury agrees with you that they committed a bad faith violation of their obligations.

Call a Boca Raton Insurance Litigation Attorney

If you are getting the runaround from an insurance company, you can take strong legal action against them. Reach out to the lawyers at Rubino Findley, PLLC online or call us at 561.220.0741 to hold the insurance company accountable.