In today’s video, we discuss how businesses can recover insurance for fraud and theft claims under different types of insurance policies.  He also explains how to navigate the common issue of insurance companies pointing fingers at other in order to avoid their own coverage obligations. This example comes from a recent case that we resolved for a client, who, upon filing a fraudulent theft claim to each of three carriers, was told by each that it was another carriers responsibility.  In that case, we demanded full coverage from each insurer, stayed firm in our position despite denials and reservations asserted by the insurers, and resolved the matter without litigation.

How To Ensure Insurance Recovery When Carriers Point Fingers

When insurance carriers point fingers and deny responsibility for coverage, it is critical to engage an insurance recovery team with the experience to bring all the parties to the table.  By taking a firm stand on each carrier’s responsibilities, businesses can turn a negative outcome into a viable solution to a common problem.  To learn more about this case, please watch the video. If you have further questions, or have found yourself in a similar situation, please give our office a call.

The telephone number for our office in Washington DC is 202-760-3160.

Here is a transcript of the video:

What do we do when insurance companies, faced with client claims, throw their hands up and say “not me?”

If you’re a parent you may be familiar with this situation. You hear a crash in the other room. You run to see what happened and you find something broken. And when you asked what happened, all of your kids respond “not me!” This is what happened with a client recently where we had three different insurance companies respond, “not me.”

Here’s what happened in that case. Our client’s independent contractor was hired to work on a case with one of our client’s most important customers. The contractor concocted a fraudulent scheme to steal money, services and property from the customer. The customer lost a lot of money. The customer then made a claim against our client holding it responsible for the fraud of the independent contractor.

The client came to us asking us how could it get insurance recovery for this fraud loss. It turned out the client had three different insurance policies from three different companies. It had a general liability policy, a professional liability policy, and it also had a crime insurance policy. We gave notice under all three policies and demanded coverage. We also supplied a lot of information that they asked for in the claims process. Finally we got a response from the insurance companies. Two of them denied coverage out right. One of them excepted coverage in part but not for the entire claim.

We were not satisfied with these responses so we wrote to the insurance companies and explained why each of them should pay the full amount. After significant negotiations, each of insurance companies admitted or at least hinted that they might be responsible for part of the claim. But each of them insisted that the other two insurance companies were more responsible. In essence each of them were telling our client “not me”. Our client was understandably very frustrated. They were upset because essentially they were being penalized for having too much insurance. We weren’t that surprised because unfortunately we see these kinds of things from insurance companies all the time. But the story has a happy ending, after further negotiations including a mediation, we eventually reached a resolution where all three insurance companies contributed toward a settlement. And the total amount of the payments paid for almost the entire loss to our client.