Bad Faith Insurance Lawyers in Cumming, GA

When you pay your insurance premiums faithfully, you expect your insurance company to hold up its end of the bargain when you file a claim. Georgia law backs up that expectation. When an insurer refuses to pay a valid claim without good reason, state law allows policyholders to seek additional damages beyond the value of the claim.

If you believe your insurance company is treating your claim unfairly, our experienced personal injury attorneys at Banks, Stubbs & McFarland are well prepared to help.

What Bad Faith Means in Georgia

Every insurance policy comes with the insurer’s obligation to deal with its policyholders honestly and fairly. In Georgia, bad faith refers to an insurance company’s frivolous and unfounded refusal to pay a claim that is covered under the policy. The question is not simply whether the insurer denied your claim but whether it had any reasonable basis for doing so. An insurer that denies or underpays a valid claim without reasonable grounds has failed to fulfill the responsibilities it took on when it sold the policy.

Whose Insurance Company Is It?

This is an important distinction that many claimants find surprising. Georgia’s bad faith statute applies to first-party claims, meaning claims you file with your own insurance company. This includes claims under your health, homeowners, life, and disability policies, as well as claims against your own auto coverage, such as collision, medical payments, and uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage.

If another driver injured you and their insurance company is dragging its feet or lowballing you, that insurer’s legal duties run to its own policyholder rather than to you. You cannot sue the at-fault driver’s insurer directly for bad faith. What you can do is pursue your injury claim aggressively. If the insurer unreasonably refuses to settle within its policy limits, that refusal can expose the company to liability for the full amount of any judgment, even beyond the policy limits. Our experienced attorneys can put this kind of pressure to work for you.

Georgia’s Bad Faith Statute

Georgia’s bad faith law, O.C.G.A. § 33-4-6, sets out both the requirements and the remedies for a first-party bad faith claim. Before filing suit, you must make a written demand for payment, and the insurer then has 60 days to pay. If the company’s refusal to pay within that window was made in bad faith, you can seek additional damages that include:

• The amount of your covered loss
• A penalty of up to 50 percent of the amount owed or $5,000, whichever is greater
• Your reasonable attorney fees

Because the written demand and the 60-day waiting period are strict requirements, working with a knowledgeable attorney from the start helps ensure your claim is positioned correctly.

Common Bad Faith Insurance Practices in GA

Common examples of the kinds of practices that tend to support successful bad faith insurance cases in Georgia include all the following:

• Denying valid claims outright without providing reasonable justification for doing so
• Failing to investigate claims adequately
• Undervaluing claims and refusing to budge on the amount in the face of ample evidence
• Prolonging the settlement process for the specific purpose of delay
• Misrepresenting the coverage available under the policy

Unfair practices like these can have far-reaching consequences for policyholders, and Georgia has important legal protections in place to help.

Our Experienced Insurance Lawyers Can Help

Our capable bad-faith insurance attorneys at Banks, Stubbs & McFarland in Cumming are committed to championing your rights against less-than-forthright insurance company practices. Contact us online or call our firm at 770-887-1209 today.