What is a Bad Faith Insurance Claim?

Legal briefs with Bree. Featuring attorneys from the Higgins Firm. With answers and advice for your legal matters.

Bree: It is important to make sure that if you have filed a claim with your insurance company that they pay promptly. Here to give us some advice about how to speed up this process is Ben Miller from the Higgins law firm. Ben welcome. We hear that it can be a very rigorous process when you file an insurance claim. Talk to us a little bit about this and about some of the laws that are in place.

Ben: Sure.Something that a lot of people don’t know is that their insurance company actually has a duty to to pay proper claims promptly and the law that provides for this is commonly referred to as the insurance bad faith statue. A policyholder might have a potential bad faith claim if they’ve made a formal demand for payment of a covered lost that has not been paid for sixty days. After that point, they have the right to make an additional claim usually in court that their insurance company has not handled the underlying claim in good faith and that a penalty might actually be available to the policy holder for that bad faith.

Bree: When we talk about claims, let’s talk about all the different ones that your firm and you actually do handle.

Ben: Sure. So you might be looking at a at a homeowners claim you have or you might be looking at a first party automobile insurance claim. What we mean by first party is, and that’s an important distinction here, is this is when the bad faith penalty is really only available for claims with your own insurance company. It is not going to be available for a claim that you are attempting to make with somebody else’s insurance company, what we call third party claims. Such as when you get into anautomobile accident and your dealing with somebody else’s insurances. They’re they’re not going to be able to make that a bad faith insurance claim against them.

Bree: Great. If you do have a problem with an insurance claim already and have an insurance claim that you need more advice be sure that you contact The Higgins Law Firm. You may find more information on the screen.

Contact Us:

If you have a potential bad faith insurance claim, please contact our office for a free consultation. This claims include:

Fire Claims Sink Hole Claims Property Damage Construction Disputes Medical Bill Disputes Bad Faith Penalities

Tennessee Provides for up to a 25% bad faith penalty and interest on the claim if the insurance company does not act in good faith. However, it is important to note that very specific procedures must be followed to be entitled to the bad faith penalty.

You can contact our lawyers at 800.705.2121.To help us effectivly evaluate the claim please havea all relevant documents available. This would include the insurance policy, damages calculations, any expert opinions and correspondence with the insurance carrier. We have successfully handled insurance disputes in courts accross the state.