What Is an Insurance Defense Attorney?
Insurance law includes a wide variety of issues relating to insurance policies. In general, an insurance defense attorney deals with three main categories as related to insurance: determining when insurance companies must pay claims, ensuring policyholders are protected when sued and consulting with insurance companies to confirm that they are complying with regulations. An insurance defense attorney can represent their clients in all of the following and more:
- Premises liability
- Bad faith
- Municipal law
- Automobile third party liability
- Medical malpractice
Working with Insurance Companies and Policyholders
Since state law generally governs the regulations followed by insurance companies, if an insurance company is accused of wrongly denying a policyholder’s claim they will hire attorneys who have a deep understanding of the laws of the state in which they are operating. Attorneys that are hired in this situation will evaluate the claims with regard to policy information and state laws to further make a decision about whether or not the claim is valid.
Another situation that may require the use of insurance defense attorneys is if a policyholder is alleged to have caused a car accident that ended in the injury of another driver and/or damages to the nearby property. Often, the other driver and their insurance company will seek monetary compensation. The insurance company responds to this by hiring an insurance defense attorney to represent their policyholder during the litigation process.
Through the litigation process and with the assistance of an insurance defense attorney, the policyholder often finds themselves paying less towards damages and insurance companies can cut down on insurance fraud and other false claims.