Severely vandalized Vehicle, resulting in a total loss. The vehicle was worth about $17,000.
The clients filed a claim on their auto insurance policy.
The company denied the claim for no apparent reason so we filed suit against the insurance company for not only breaching the insurance contract but also bad faith. Pennsylvania law requires that an insurance company act with the utmost in good faith toward its policyholders. We claimed that the carrier’s actions did not meet that requirement.
The Court agreed with us, finding bad faith by the insurance company and then, in a subsequent opinion, awarding our client over one million dollars in damages including punitive damages, legal fees, court costs, and interest in addition to the value of the car. In what the Allentown Morning Call described as a “scathing opinion,” the Court found that the insurance company engaged in “trickery” and stated that the conduct of the insurance company was “flagrant, deceitful, and outrageous.”
Link to an article in the Allentown Morning Call of its coverage can be found here.