I Have A Legitimate Claim Against An Insurance Company Yet They Repeatedly Fail, Refuse and Neglect To Resolve My Claim – Is This Bad Faith?
Imagine this scenario. You have been involved in a catastrophic injury accident and an insurance company owes you money for your injuries as liability is not in dispute. Yet, the insurance company either refuses not to make an offer or offers an amount so grossly insufficient that it offends one’s conscience. The Philadelphia-based catastrophic injury and wrongful death law firm of Reiff and Bily has served residents of Pennsylvania since 1979, and has been dedicated to protecting the rights of injured victims against insurance companies when the insurance company fails to act in good faith and seeks to illegally or illegitimately evade payment on a proper claim.
Recently I became involved in a case where a client of mine was injured requiring two major surgical procedures. One of the insurance companies involved in the case immediately tendered their full policy limits. Yet my client’s own insurance company made an insufficient offer and did not even make any offer under the underinsured motorist portion of her policy with that company until a suit was filed against the company alleging “bad faith”. In fact, the victim’s own company was listed as number four of the ten worst insurance companies in America in a study by the American Association for Justice. The American Association for Justice study noted that this insurance company had gone to extreme lengths to avoid paying claims and was criticized by numerous state regulators for using misleading statistics and unfair claims practices.
In my client’s particular case, due to the failure of her own insurance company to make an offer in good faith, we filed a direct action against the insurance carrier for bad faith. Bad faith insurance practices are nothing new. Unfortunately, it has become an epidemic in the U.S. insurance industry today. As President Obama recently stated “The American insurance companies are holding us all hostage.” The dictionary claims that bad faith is defined as “any frivolous or unfounded refusal to pay proceeds of a policy for purposes of an action against an insurer for failure to pay a claim, such conduct imports a dishonest purpose and means of breech of a known duty through some motive of self-interest or ill will.”
The experienced bad faith insurance claims lawyers at Reiff and Bily believe that when an insured pays for a policy, he has the right to expect that the insurance company will treat him in good faith and owes a fiduciary obligation to their insured to pay all valid claims in a timely manner without delay or denial. The insurance company owes their insured the right to investigate the claim in a prompt and efficient manner and not to engage in intentional fraud or deceptive practices. Unfortunately, the dedication of shareholders of insurance companies takes precedence over the fiduciary obligation of the insurance company to pay legitimate claims of their insureds. Many times we find that the insurance companies fail to make any offer or make minimal offers until a case is on the courtroom steps or in fact, being tried.
The bad faith and insurance claims attorneys at Reiff and Bily work tirelessly to protect catastrophically injured consumers and victims facing financial and medical uncertainty after an accident from the corporate bullies sitting high in their insurance towers earning millions of dollars a year in salaries. At the experienced catastrophic injury law firm of Reiff and Bily our lawyers understand and respect the value of hope and the loss of someone’s dreams. It is our job to communicate the plaintiff’s dreams and hopes to insurance companies and ultimately the juries who hear our cases. It is our job to prove what the plaintiff was capable of doing prior to an accident and to identify the proper compensation necessary for the plaintiff to recognize fulfillment of his dreams and goals.
The experienced lawyers at Reiff and Bily are not afraid to ask the insurance companies and juries to fully compensate plaintiffs for the loss of their dreams and hopes. We refuse to allow insurance companies and corporate defendants to attack the pathways to the courts for injured plaintiffs. In effect, the bad faith strategy of these companies is to state that there is no value to hope or the loss of one’s dreams.
It is interesting to note that many of these corporate insurance company executives or insurance company attorneys don’t think twice about buying vacation homes in the Hamptons or the seashore or spending millions of dollars on a piece of art and yet they are quick to extol the virtues of their products or insurance polices when they take your money but when it comes time to take responsibility to pay their claims, they will pull every trick in the book to protect their coffers and increase value to the shareholders and make you feel like a criminal.
If you or a loved one has been catastrophically injured and is wrongfully being denied insurance benefits, please contact the experienced Philadelphia catastrophic personal injury and insurance claim lawyers of Reiff and Bily at 1-800-421-9595 or online at www.reiffandbily.com for a free, no obligation consultation.
