Parks Chastain recently wrote here about trigger happy policyholders prematurely filing lawsuits against insurance companies before a denial ever occurs. The reason for this is the provision in insurance policies that shortens the applicable statute of limitations to a period of usually one or two years from the date of the loss. As Parks mentioned
insurance claim
General Contractors’ Overhead and Profit Charges – Recoverable?
By Brandon McWherter on
Posted in Miscellaneous
This is one of those topics that comes up regularly. Does an insurer have to pay general contractors’ overhead and profit charges? The short answer is "Yes" but there are some exceptions. According to a 2005 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case (interpreting Tennessee law), the costs of a contractor (overhead and profit) are…
What is Bad Faith and When Should the Bad Faith Penalty Be Awarded?
By Brandon McWherter on
Posted in Bad Faith
In a post several days ago, the co-author of this blog, Parks Chastain, commented that Tennessee’s statutory bad faith penalty should rarely be awarded against an insurer. In reaching this conclusion, he noted a 1961 federal district court case that stated that the the bad faith penalty should not be awarded unless the insurer’s conduct…
Experts Hired by Insurance Companies to Assist with Claim Decisions Should be Unbiased
By Brandon McWherter on
Posted in Bad Faith, Miscellaneous
As a result of the numerous tornados that have passed through Tennessee over the past decade, I have become acutely aware of the fact that insurance companies use the same engineering firms over and over again in their investigation of whether a claim constitutes a covered loss. The obvious problem with insurance companies’ repeated use…