Insurance Claims Attorney

You have paid your insurance month after month, year after year, for as long as you can remember. 

You didn’t pay insurance because you wanted to make your insurance company rich.

You do this because one day something bad might happen. You might suffer an injury because of an auto accident.

There might be a hurricane or other storm that damages your home where you and your family live. There could be a tornado, fire or other natural disasters that might damage your property or home.

You pay these insurance premiums because if one of these events happened, you want to have coverage. You want your insurance company to take care of you.

You paid your insurance so that the insurance company would pay your valid claim.  

After all, isn’t that what all the commercials say? That like a good neighbor your insurance company will be there for you and your time and need?

Unfortunately, insurance companies are known for denying valid claims, many times without explanation.  That’s because insurance companies are in the business of making massive profits. And they learned a long time ago that Denying claims increases the bottom line. 

Other times insurance companies agree to pay a claim but offer much less then the claim is worth.

And unfortunately, that means for you that you may be in a situation where they are drastically undervaluing your claim and trying to get you to take much less than what your claim is worth.

Think about it from this perspective: insurance companies make money by minimizing claims. Their employees get bonuses by minimizing claims. Insurance companies float money and other investments and lend it so that at the end of the day they make money by taking as long as possible to pay claims.

They are not incentivized in any way to pay your claim.

For example, damage to your roof may actually require a new roof, but an insurance company may just try to pay for a cement repair. Other times, insurance companies may refuse to pay your medical providers on a valid claim. 

The good news is that you can fight back. And you can do so without having to pay an attorney out of your pocket. Here’s how we do it:

1. Review Your Insurance Policy

Insurance claims always come back to the contract you signed with your insurance carrier. Insurance policies spell out what is covered and what is not.

Even if you think your claim is not covered, let us review it first.  Sometimes we can find coverage because of an “ambiguity” in the contract.

In Florida, if the “tie goes to the runner”, then you the policyholder are the runner. 

Any sloppy contract language can be used by you to get your claim covered.

2. Investigate

Next, we need to build your claim.  We often use a public adjuster or other professional to go out to your home or business to start gathering evidence.

In some property cases, we will send an engineer out to your house or building to create a report on your loss. In other cases (like business interruption cases), we may use a forensic accountant to figure out your damages.

The good news is that we often front the costs for these experts for your claim.  Meaning, nothing comes out of your pocket.  If we ultimately succeed on your claim, we will go after the insurance company to pay your costs.

3. Negotiate

Finally, we will negotiate your claim.

We almost always file a lawsuit at the beginning of your case, but most cases settle before you get to a courtroom.

Remember it is your case, so we need to get a resolution that you agree with.

Frequently Asked Questions – FAQ’S:

Do I Need An Insurance Claims Attorney?

If you try to handle your insurance claim and the insurance company is either denying your claim or they’re not giving you a fair value, then it makes sense to have an attorney look at the claim with you.

Our job is to make sure that you get a fair value for your claim. We do this by making demands of the insurance company and filing lawsuits when needed against your insurance company.

Florida has a very good insurance claims attorney laws. Florida doesn’t want insurance companies who are very powerful to run all over their insureds. Florida has a prevailing party provision rule that says if you beat your insurance company in court then your insurance company must pay for your attorney’s fees. We use this ammo to get much better results for clients than they would’ve gotten if the insurance company just played fair and settled the case in the first place.

Your insurance claim attorney will handle everything from start to finish, including all the paperwork that needs to be done, all negotiations that need be done with the insurance company and their attorneys, settling the claim, filing a lawsuit, doing discovery that’s needed in the lawsuit, mediating the case, and if needed taking the case to trial.

We take insurance claims on a contingency fee basis meaning if there isn’t any required recovery then you don’t have to pay a single dime!

Why Did The Insurance Company Deny My Claim?

While insurance companies are always creative in how they deny or undervalue claims the following are some of the most common ways that they try to rebuff their customers:

Having “independent experts” evaluate the claim to determine that your claim is not covered. This is one of the more frustrating tricks that insurance companies do. They hire an expert and pay them money and then claim that their independent experts.

The reality is that these experts are hired guns and will say whatever the insurance company wants him to say.

In insurance claims, it could be a doctor who is evaluating an injured car accident victim and determines that the car accident victim has no injuries and so PIP insurance should not apply. Or it could be a roofing expert who reviews a damaged roof and determines that there really wasn’t any damage to the roof or the roof damage was by an act of God and isn’t covered under an insurance policy.

Policy Exclusions: Most homeowners’ policies are large, often more than 50 pages long. While the policy will mention that certain things are covered, there are tons of exclusions that are listed in the policy. For example, many policies have certain dog bite exclusions. Insurance companies will look for exclusions to argue that whatever loss you suffered isn’t covered under the policy at all and therefore deny the claim.

Undervaluing a claim: while you may think that your insurance damages that are covered are worth a certain value, an insurance company may look at the damages that you suffered and determine that the value is much less.

Many cases if you have a deductible the insurance company will say that the amount of damage that you suffered doesn’t rise to the level of deductible and therefore there isn’t any coverage.

My Claim Was Denied! How Can I Win?

A denial of a claim is just the first stage of negotiation!  The insurance company is not allowed to take your payments every year and then just deny your claim without a good reason.  

We tattle tale on the insurance company to the department of financial regulation and then file a lawsuit for breach of contract.  

How Do You Get Paid?

By the insurance companies!  

You don’t pay us.  We get a good result for you, and then we go after the insurance companies for payment and costs.  We take all the risk so you don’t have to.  

Florida has a very good law that protects consumers from greedy insurance companies. That law says if we get more than what the insurance company initially offered you, then we can force the insurance company to pay your fees. 

That way, you do not have to worry about a portion of your settlement or repair having to go to pay attorneys. 

What Type of Insurance Disputes Does Your Firm Handle?

At Denmon Pearlman, we are committed to helping our clients who are trying to settle their insurance disputes with their insurance carriers. We help in a wide range of insurance dispute areas. We help with:

Contact Denmon Pearlman Insurance Attorneys 

Contact us by calling or texting us at 813-365-3512.

We have a free “second look” policy where we will review your insurance claim information and policy and give you honest feedback on what your claim is really worth.

You can chat directly with an insurance attorney with our firm.