by ty_ger88 » Fri Sep 14, 2007 02:20 pm
Many a times you may be unhappy with your insurance company for not paying you your dues or for delaying your payments or for any other reason. Your insurance company does not always have the upper hand. There are laws to protect you if you have a dishonest insurer.
When can you sue your insurance company?
You can sue your insurance company on grounds of:
If your insurer tries to trick you by not paying up a legitimate claim you can put up a civil suit against the company for having acted in bad faith. A company shows bad faith when it unreasonably denies a legitimate claim. This may mean that:
You can sue your insurance company for the full amount of benefits that has been denied to you as well as for any economic loss or emotional distress that you may have had to suffer as a result of the refusal. If your insurance company has been dishonest you may also get punitive damages. This is a means to make the insurance company behave more responsibly in future correspondences.
It is good to keep all paper works organized so that you can find them as soon as you need them. You may think of an old receipt as unimportant but it might hold great importance when you have a case standing against your insurer for bad faith or breach of contract.
- Bad faith and
- Breach of contract
If your insurer tries to trick you by not paying up a legitimate claim you can put up a civil suit against the company for having acted in bad faith. A company shows bad faith when it unreasonably denies a legitimate claim. This may mean that:
- The company has failed to carry out proper investigations
- Undue delay in processing a claim
- Disregarding the rights of the policyholder
- Inadequate compensation provided against claim filed
You can sue your insurance company for the full amount of benefits that has been denied to you as well as for any economic loss or emotional distress that you may have had to suffer as a result of the refusal. If your insurance company has been dishonest you may also get punitive damages. This is a means to make the insurance company behave more responsibly in future correspondences.
It is good to keep all paper works organized so that you can find them as soon as you need them. You may think of an old receipt as unimportant but it might hold great importance when you have a case standing against your insurer for bad faith or breach of contract.
Related Readings
- Suing your insurance company
- Can you sue your insurance company?
- Suing car insurance company
- How to sue car insurance company?
- Suing insurance company for bad faith
- Truck driver suing insurance company
- Suing for liability claims
- Sue for breach of contract
- Can you sue for liability claims?
I'm confused, please help. Here's my story and question. I'll try to make it short. My car was hit about a month ago. I was not in the car. It was parked on the side street. The driver of the truck that hit me left a note with all of his information. Now, it has been almost a month, and his insurance is not doing much. At first, they promised to have the damage estimated, but then nothing was sent to the car shop where my car located. I ended up going through my own insurance company. The problem is before I went with my insurance company, I had rented a car and had discussed this with the other insurance company. They said they would reimburse me all the fees. Now, they're not answering my calls. They keep on telling me that the agent is busy and will get back to me. It has been 4 days since I faxed in my car rental bill. What can I do? Can I sue them? Would you tell me how to sue an insurance company? The bill was paid for by my credit card, and I don't want to owe interests on it. Please help. Thanks.
Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 01:11 am Post Subject: med pay
Hi.
Iam a 27 year old male me and my father had a car accident on 2/9/2011 on a icy private rd.I was the passenger in the car and his car was totaled out and i was pretty dinged up my er bills came to about 7000 i AM Presently between jobs but i do have medicade insurance.the adjuster told me although my dad has 10,000 med pay coverage and full comp that i would not be able to receive any money on med pay even though he had the coverage is there anyway i can make them pay me.she also said that once she got all my medical togeather she could make me a offer ???what would be normal range for a settelment with 7000 dollars in med
thank you in advance
Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 06:51 pm Post Subject:
if i sustained a complete loss of my property can the insurance company deny me the total value of my policy?
Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 07:08 pm Post Subject:
Good question... as I have a claim like that right now. It depends... they only owe actual cash value or replacement cost unless the state is a Stated Policy state. That is, some states do state that the limits of the policy need to be paid if the property is a total loss. This makes sense as the insured is paying for that limit... why pay for it if it will never be paid. On the otherhand should I be allowed to over insure a home and make a huge profit on a loss.
Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 04:31 am Post Subject: insurance company
my insurance is paying for someones eles car and they were at fault no insurance or driver licence iam not at fault and its going to court can i sue my insurance
Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 03:22 am Post Subject: i want to sue an insurance
hi i got into an accident that wsnt my fault and the insurance offer me an estamate that cant fix my car damage and later they sent me a latter says that they pay 90 %
Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 06:00 pm Post Subject: HELP, PLEASE!!
in february 2009 i bought a jetta and insured it under an insurance agent with encompass insurance. in january of 2010 the jetta was totalled. in march of 2010 i bought a 2010 prius, and the financing and insurance were under totally seperate non related companies (toyota financial and liberty mutual). somehow, on february 25th 2010 (one month after it was totalled) the original agent that i had encompass with signed me up with arbella, using the VIN of the totalled car. after the payments for my arbella insured jetta (which remember, is totalled) went into collections (which is the first i heard of the policy) i called and fought tooth and nail until it was credited and they removed the policy, included int hat fight was the agent saying "sorry, not our problem anymore, deal with arbella' even though theyre the ones signing me up. NONE THE LESS after allllll this headache and everything taken care of, a year later, i get another collection letter from the agent asking for the same fees from a year ago. little did i know the payment of this policy has been knocking points off of my credit for a year! what do i do? please help, i'm ready to take this agent to court.
Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 08:01 pm Post Subject:
In addition to taking the agent to court, you MUST file a complaint with your state's Dept of Insurance. The agent obviously did something unlawful, earned a commission, and is sticking you with the bill.
You could also file a complaint with your local law enforcement agency to see if you can get the local district attorney involved. Problem with this is that the police are rarely knowledgeable in insurance codes, and would probably not know how to write the report and cite the correct section(s) of law for the DA to prosecute. Starting with the Dept of Insurance will probably work best.
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 02:32 pm Post Subject: sue if?
okay my insurance company just denied my claim after an investigation that they did!! can i place a lawsuit on them or no?
Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 01:58 am Post Subject:
What was their reason for the claims denial? They have to tell you. Can't give you proper advice without knowing the full story.
Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 05:29 am Post Subject: Abandoned ust groundwater impact
I have a serious situation going on which I took the responsibility of paying for the oil tank removal and the contaminated soil however groundwater was impacted and being that myself and the insurance company had no knowledge of said ust they dropped me immediately and denied to pay for the 3rd party which is groundwater impact. Their response is that they cannot determine the release date of said oil so they will not cover it. I'm wondering is there anything that I can do
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