Did you experience bad faith insurance in Florida? Learn about what to do when filing a bad faith insurance claim here, then give us a call.
1) Bad Faith Insurance Definition
Insurance bad faith is when an insurance company doesn’t deal fairly with you, and in the context of claims, doesn’t settle a case when it could have, and under all the circumstances, should have within the policy limits of your case.
2) Suspicions
It depends on the circumstances. Here’s an example of how we handled a circumstance rather recently:
A client had an event happen in her backyard where someone got hurt. She was responsible. The person got hurt very badly. Her insurance company, her homeowner insurance company, would not pay the claim to the woman who got hurt. Her damages, her injuries go way beyond the limits of the insurance policy, so she came to us, asking what to do.
What we did was we put the insurance company on notice of its behavior, saying that we fully expected the insurance company to deal fairly with that injured person, and pay that person, and settle the case within our client’s policy limits. We did that so that if this injured person sues and gets a verdict way beyond our client’s policy limits and personally exposes her to those damages, then we have set the stage for a bad faith case.
That is a way to protect yourself if you have that kind of scenario where your own insurance company is not doing what you think they ought to do. Call us. We’ve been in practice for decades. We can write a letter. We can lay the foundation for protecting you in the event the insurance company’s behavior harms you by putting you in a position of personal exposure for a loss that should have been paid by your insurance that you bought and that you relied upon to protect you.
3) Statue of Limitations
It’s five years. It’s more than the average four years, but it’s five years from the date that you get the verdict or the judgment. You’ve got time, but time is allusive, as we all know.
4) Damages Available
The best way to illustrate that is to give an example. We had a case once where a man got hurt, hurt badly. We sued his insurance company. They would not settle the case for the policy. His injuries were large.
We went to trial. We obtained a verdict that fairly outlined his damages, which was far in excess of the policy limits. Once that verdict was turned into a judgment and the case was over, we turned around, and we sued the insurance company again for the balance over and above the insurance policy limits. We were successful in that case, as well.
Traditionally, that’s the scenario that we have. Now, there are other ins and outs to bad faith. There are complexities to it. What classically we see in damages that you can get in a bad faith case is the amount over and above the policy limits that the insurance company should have paid in the first place to settle the case, but they refused to do so. They’re on the hook for the entire amount of the damages in the first trial.
Did you or a loved one experience bad faith insurance in Florida and have questions about what to do when filing a bad faith insurance claim? Contact an experienced Nassau County bad faith insurance lawyer at Paul Boone Law today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
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