Understanding Bad Faith Insurance Claims
Insurance companies are in a unique position. They are part of one of the few industries that have laws requiring you to pay them. If you want to drive a car in the US, the law requires you to have car insurance. To have car insurance, you must pay an insurance company. Thankfully, this legally mandated payment scheme also gives consumers certain rights and remedies. A law providing such a remedy is the requirement that insurance companies act in good faith when handling claims. As a Kansas City personal injury attorney practicing law in the area for over 20 years, we are intimately aware of the bad faith rules and have handled many such bad faith insurance claim cases. In my experience, here are three of the signs that your insurance company is acting in bad faith.
Unreasonable Claim Denials
Your insurance company is taking an unreasonable position. Insurance companies almost always flat out deny a claim, despite what the facts say. You could be entirely at fault for an accident, yet your insurance company will still deny the injured party’s claim. When you are obviously at fault, but the insurance company is refusing to settle the injured party’s claim, it is a clear sign that it is acting in bad faith.
Unfair Settlement Conditions
The company is adding settlement conditions or requirements. When insurance companies settle a claim with an injured party in a crash where its insured is at fault, they sometimes try and sneak terms and conditions into the settlement agreement that were not part of the deal. For example, if your insurance company settles a claim in a crash that was your fault, it might try and add itself to the list of released parties and not just you (even though it did not cause the crash and cannot be liable to the injured party). When this happens, the settlement can sometimes blow up and leave you at risk of a money judgment. This is a sign of bad faith.
Prioritizing Profits Over Policyholders
Your insurance company is putting their interests ahead of yours. This is the crux of bad faith. Most states’ laws require insurance companies to put its insureds’ interests ahead of their own. That means, among other things, that insurance companies can’t deny a claim just to save money. And since insurance companies are almost always publicly traded, for-profit corporations, their primary goal is to make money. They will go to extraordinary lengths to achieve that goal. When they do, at the expense of the people they insure, they are acting in bad faith.
Do You Have a Bad Faith Insurance Case?
If you’re at fault for a crash or other accident and your insurance company is showing any of the signs of bad faith, please contact MRH Law. We are insurance claims attorneys, and can vet your bad faith case and answer any questions you have.
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