Not every denial of an insurance claim is an act of bad faith by an insurance company. In fact, the law in Oklahoma provides an insurance company has a right to be wrong about a decision on a claim without automatically being in bad faith. However, not every dispute is “legitimate.” If every claim denial
As noted in a previous post, there is no comprehensive list of acts of bad faith by an insurance company under Oklahoma law. Further, the legal definition of bad faith leaves a lot of gray area to be filled in based on the facts of each case. As a result, the question of whether an
As a young lawyer starting to work on bad faith cases, I was anxious to do the legal research necessary to find a list of acts by an insurance company that qualified as “bad faith.” I began looking in the law books (we didn’t use computerized research much back in the stone ages). I quickly
An insurance policy is a contract. The contract basically provides the policyholder will pay the agreed amount of premiums to the insurance company in exchange for the insurance company’s promise to pay covered claims. The law in Oklahoma has long recognized that an insurance contract is different than other kinds of contracts.
In 1977, the