As a customer, you have to put a great deal of trust into your insurance company. When you have to file a claim, it is expected that your insurance company will be there for you, providing you with what you need during a time when you need it the most. If your insurance company fails to come through for you once filing a claim, you may need the assistance of a bad faith insurance attorney.
What is Insurance Bad Faith?
You may be at liberty to file an insurance bad faith claim against your insurance company, should they deny or lowball your coverage after filing a reasonable claim. Insurance companies in the U.S. are bound by a duty of “good faith and fair dealing” to those whom they insure. If an insurance company fails to uphold this promise, the insured party has a right to sue their insurance company for both insurance bad faith, as well as a breach of contract. With the assistance of a bad faith insurance attorney ( Actslaw.com/bad-faith-insurance-attorney ), you are more likely to succeed in getting the compensation that you deserve by following through on your insurance bad faith claim. In some cases, you may actually recover an amount larger than what you were owed originally, if your insurance company’s behavior surrounding your claim was particularly terrible.
When Do You Have a Bad Faith Claim?
Bad faith insurance attorneys have experience in a wide variety of bad faith claims. Insurance bad faith claims can occur in both “first party” and “third party” scenarios. In a first party situation, an insurance company may improperly refuse to pay the full value on property that becomes damaged. Rather than investigating the damages and determining the true value of the property that was affected, an insurance company can break the insured’s trust by failing to determine the actual worth of the damaged property. This can result in the insured getting much less compensation than they deserve for the property that was damaged, all due to a poor investigation and valuation on the insurance company’s part. In some cases, the insurance company might also refuse to cover the costs of the damages altogether, failing to acknowledge an otherwise sound claim.
Third party situations, on the other hand, often involve cases concerning liability insurance. Liability insurance can be best understood as “risk financing”, which protects the insured party from the liabilities resulting from lawsuits and other similar claims. If the insured faces a lawsuit ( Actslaw.com/about-us ), the insurance company owes it to their client to defend that claim, even if a portion of the lawsuit is not covered by the insured’s policy. The insurance company is responsible for paying any costs related to defending the claim, regardless of the actual policy’s coverage. An insurance company must also pay a judgement entered against the insured, up to the policy’s coverage limit. In this case, the final judgement must be for an act or omission that is covered by the insurance policy. In both first party and third party situations, there are certain expectations that the insured has once filing a claim, and there are subsequent duties that must be carried out by their insurance company. Insurance companies owe it to their clients to fulfil the obligations that are expected of them, or else they run the risk of enduring a bad faith claim. In these situations, a bad faith insurance attorney will have your back when your insurance provider does not.