Maryland has expanded 27-1001 to Disability Claims effective October 1 and forward. See House Bill 990 from the present session. I read the "revised" fiscal policy note. It had nothing of any real interest. I was hoping for an assessment on whether and how insurance bad faith statutes change how insurers price their products or handle their claims. You know, the real policy question behind whether bad faith statutes work. Instead, the only thing in there is a one sentence not

This office sees insured-side homeowners denials a lot. Essentially, these clients did not realize there was a residency clause in their homeowners insurance. So their residency-status changes (sometimes without their doing anything), they do not update their insurance, and when something happens, they get denied. Legally, this denial is more complicated than most. Standard homeowners policies do not have a residency exclusion. The denial comes from a “where you reside” claus

The MIA just sent out an email asking insurers to not insist on police reports in light of the widespread damage making reports not a priority. On one hand, I get this. On the other, the reason the insurers insist on police reports is partially to ensure they only pay real claims. The email reads: Good morning. I wanted to reach out regarding the recent disturbances and subsequent claim activity in Baltimore City. As has been reported, while the situation appears to be stabi

Maryland is planning to put a slight modification into its mandatory insurance scheme. Insurers have apparently based their underwriting criteria on credit rating. (Ability to drive a car safely correlates with percieved likelyhood of paying back borrowed money?) Maryland is considering banning this practice. It tends to give higher rates to people with less money or something. Yet somehow, WBAL found someone to cast this as a story about evil technology. They have a quote th

People should not bother bringing 27-303 actions because 27-1001 actions are better. (Assuming you can bring a 27-1001 of course. 27-1001 only applies to Property and Casualty insurers. 27-303 also applies to Health Insurers.) The first thing I noticed about 27-303 Unfair Claim Settlement Practices claims is that they are basically identical to 27-1001 actions, except 27-1001 have jury trials. 27-1001 and 27-303 are superficially different. They articulate the violation diffe

One of the strange things about 27-1001 data is that so few people complain about their insurance companies. I've wondered about this before. Since 27-303 claims are so similar to 27-1001 claims, maybe the reason there just aren't as many as expected is that they get classified as 27-303 claims, especially if they are pro-se and do not clearly label it? #Statistics #MarylandInsuranceAdministration #UnfairTradePracticesClaims #InsuranceBadFaith

Maryland really has two bad faith regimes. We have the 27-1001 First Party Tort and the Administrative 27-303 Unfair Claim Settlement Practices claims. Now that I've largely run out of 27-1001 things to talk about, I'm going to research 27-303s /4-113a. It should be much harder because the MIA does not report the kind of data it releases about 27-1001s. #UnfairTradePracticesClaims #MarylandInsuranceAdministration #InsuranceBadFaith

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2015/01/26/insurance-commissioner-redmer-maryland-needs-more.html According to the Baltimore Business Journal report last week, the new head of the Maryland Insurance Administration wants to recruit more Insurers. He isn't sure which markets needs more insurers or which insurers he wants, but he wants more insurers. As somewhat generic ideas go, this sounds good enough. Judging by a Baltimore Sun article the same day, they want more a

Encompass low-balled its insured by misusing Colossus The Maryland Insurance Administration held that Encompass acted in bad faith by lowballing its Insured. Encompass had determined what settlement offer to make using Colossus, a program that helps adjusters value cases. The Maryland Insurance Administration found that Encompass could not explain how it chose to give Colossus data. The Maryland Insurance Administration therefore held that blindly relying on Colossus rose to

Nationwide lowballed its insured by offering $125,000 when they valued the case at $235,410 without being able to explain why their offer was so low. The Occurrence Plaintiff was injured in a two vehicle accident when the other driver failed to yield. Plaintiff's car was totaled. The other driver’s insurer tendered its liability limits —$25,000. (It was a Virginia policy, so it was not subject to Maryland's 30/60 minimums.) Plaintiff had auto insurance with Nationwide with $3

The MIA has published its 2014 Report on the bad faith statute. There were some little stuff. Fourteen cases were dismissed for failing to meet the statutory requirements. Dismissals like this disappeared after 2010 (and 2010 only had 1 compared to 14 in 2009). I am sure there's a good reason why they suddenly came back on this scale. I just don't know it yet. Otherwise, the odds of a merits decision of the remaining cases are basically constant. Insureds had 3 wins, 13 losse

Since Maryland Courts rarely say anything at all about Maryland's bad faith statute, I always keep an eye out for cases from the Federal District Court of Maryland. Even if those cases are not reported, they wind up on PACER, so you can access them. And unreported District Court law is better than no law. So: Bierman v. United Farm Family Insurance Co., Case 1:12-cv-02445-RDB; Document 27; (May 6, 2013): Memorandum Opinion on Motion to Dismiss. Insureds have three policies wi

Another obscure decision on Maryland's bad faith regime: Millenium Inorganic Chemicals v. National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, 893 F.Supp.2d 715 (2012). It's even reported! Insured has an insurance policy governed by either New York or New Jersey law. (Which law governed was at issue, but irrelevant to the bad faith part of this. What matters is that Maryland law definitely did not apply.) Since the District Court of Maryland holds that "the law that governs

Fakhoury v. Great Northern Insurance Co., Case 1:12-cv-00268-WDQ, Document 18, (D.Md. 2012): one small unreported step in developing Maryland’s bad faith statute. In Fakhoury, the insureds had fire insurance on their home. The house burned down in 2009. The insurer denied coverage for two reasons: the insureds had directed someone to light the fire and the insureds had “made false statements, intentionally concealed and misrepresented material facts… and engaged in fraudulent