Helping hold insurance companies responsible for acting in bad faith

While it can undoubtedly be painful to write out a check once a month, once every six months or once a year to cover an insurance premium, it can nevertheless grant you, the policyholder, much-needed peace of mind. Indeed, you might feel secure knowing that should the unexpected and the unfortunate occur, your best interests will be protected — at least from a financial perspective.

What happens, however, when the insurance company, which you’ve been paying so diligently, places its own best interests ahead of yours and, in the process, ends up costing you a catastrophic amount of money?

While this may sound like an unlikely scenario, consider what can happen when an insurance company wrongly exposes a policyholder to what is known as an excess judgment.

To illustrate, consider a scenario in which a person is injured while visiting the home of a policyholder and subsequently files a lawsuit. Thereafter, the injured party offers to settle the matter for the homeowners’ policy limit of $500,000, but the insurance company refuses, claiming the injuries sustained only amount to $40,000 and deciding to battle it out in court.

What happens, however, if the jury sides with the injured party, ultimately awarding them $1,000,000? Suddenly, the policyholder is on the hook for $500,000 because of the insurance company’s failure to settle within the policy limits.

In unfortunate situations like these, policyholders should be aware that they may have grounds for what is known as a bad faith lawsuit against the insurance company.

At Ver Ploeg & Marino, P.A., we have been enforcing the rights and protecting the best interests of clients across Florida in insurance disputes for over 15 years. What this means is that we have the type of comprehensive skill, knowledge and experience needed to help secure the coverage that policyholders deserve and, when necessary, hold insurance companies accountable for acting in bad faith.

To learn more about how we can help with insurance disputes relating to excess judgments, please visit our website. 

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