Bad Faith

Oklahoma Insurance companies have a duty of good faith. When handling your claims, they must treat you reasonably, promptly and they must thoroughly investigate your case. If you feel this hasn’t been executed by your insurance company, you may have a bad-faith lawsuit.

What does a bad-faith lawsuit and why should you care?

In the state of Oklahoma, insurance companies have what we call the duty of good faith and fair dealing and that means when they’re handling your claim, they’ve got to treat you reasonably. They’ve got to treat you in good faith and that obligation takes a lot of different forms. They’ve got to handle your claim promptly. They’ve got to do a proper investigation and they’ve got to thoroughly investigate your claim. They’ve also got to investigate your claim even-handedly. A lot of people think that insurance companies are there to deny your claim and that’s not always true, but in many instances, it is. If an insurance company has denied your claim and you don’t think that they’ve really thought about it or if an insurance company has denied your claim and they haven’t conducted any investigation as far as you’ve seen, you might have a bad faith case. A smart lawyer once told me that insurance bad faith really is just the smell test. If the way that the insurance company has handled your claim just doesn’t smell right, somebody should look into it when your insurance company doesn’t help you.