New York & New Jersey
Insurance Litigation Attorneys

Insurance Litigation
• Life Insurance Claim Denial
• Failure to Pay or Underpayment of Claims
• Errors and Omissions in Coverage

Insurance Litigation

Negligent, bad faith or fraudulent practices with respect to insurance policies, insurance coverage or insurance claims can take many forms.

We specialize in claims against insurance companies for failing to pay or underpaying in accordance with the provisions of their policies, and in claims against insurance brokers for making errors and omissions that damage policyholders’ abilities to collect under their existing policies. 

In order to properly evaluate and litigate an insurance matter, legal counsel needs to have a working knowledge of insurance principles, practices, and terminology, in addition to insurance law. They have to be able to read and understand every clause of an insurance policy. And it is critical that they be highly skilled in analyzing and understanding the INSURANCE APPLICATION, which is often at issue in insurance litigation.

Policies and applications are often written so that the fine print is barely decipherable, and so the language can be interpreted to benefit the insurance company, rather than the policyholder. Insurance Law often permits interpretations of these clauses that run contrary to common sense. Insurance Law often makes the insured and his or her family responsible for the misstatements by the broker who sold the insurance policy.

Trief & Olk has extensive insurance litigation experience. Some examples of our insurance litigation cases are:

• An action on behalf of a wholesale jeweler against an insurance company that denied coverage when shipped diamonds were stolen by a person claiming to be an employee of the company the diamonds were shipped to. This matter was taken successfully to New York State’s highest appeals court.
• We represented a family of a deceased physician when the life insurance company refused to pay the family’s claim, alleging that failure to pay the premium had caused the doctor’s life insurance policy to lapse. We were able to defeat the insurance company’s position by establishing that the company had failed to properly send out the premium notice. We won at trial; and the jury trial was affirmed by the appellate court.
• In another life insurance case, we succeeded in winning a claim for payment of proceeds where the insurance company alleged misrepresentations in the insured’s application. Our client prevailed in this matter and the insurance company properly paid on the life insurance policy.
• When a driver was killed by the rear wheels of a truck breaking free and striking his vehicle, the truck’s insurance company claimed that it was not liable because the trailer was not owned by the trucking company at the time of the accident. We successfully defeated the claim and the deceased’s family was paid by the liability policy.
• We represented a national beverage corporation against an insurance broker for failing to obtain the proper insurance. This case involved goods that were manufactured for our client. One of their “co-packers” stole the goods ad resold the product as its own. The company had requested that their insurance policy cover this risk; and the broker had failed to obtain the coverage as requested. Our client prevailed in this matter and the broker’s Errors and Omissions policy paid the claim.

If you have suffered losses from an insurance company’s failure to pay a claim or a broker’s failure to provide proper insurance, please call or e-mail our Manhattan, New York City, New York or New Jersey insurance fraud attorneys for more information or to discuss your case.

For more information about life insurance claim denial litigation, please click here.
Life Insurance Claim Denial Lawyers

Trief & Olk
Insurance Litigaton Attorneys

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