Miami Bad Faith Insurance Lawyer
You paid the premium for years, and the one time you needed the policy your own insurer went quiet or offered a fraction. We can take it from here. Call 844-643-7200 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Miami personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Miami-Dade County since 1993.
Bad Faith Insurance claims in Miami
The carrier has a file, a timeline and a written reason for what it did, and none of it has been shown to you. Meanwhile the repair is not happening, the money is not arriving, and the letters keep asking for documents you have already sent twice. Making them answer in writing is our job, and it starts the day you call.
Miami-Dade produces a steady volume of serious-injury claims against drivers whose policies are far too small for the harm done. Where an insurer had a clear opportunity to settle within those limits and refused, and a judgment then exceeds them, that failure is actionable and the recovery is no longer capped by the policy. Setting it up requires a properly framed time-limited demand at the start rather than an argument at the end, which is why the way an early demand is written matters more than it appears to.
The most common bad faith case in Miami-Dade is a carrier that would not settle inside its insured’s limits. Where the insurer had a genuine opportunity and refused, and a judgment then exceeds the policy, the recovery is no longer capped. That case is set up by how the first demand is written, not by an argument at the end.
What to do when an insurer will not pay
- Ask for the complete claim file in writing. Adjuster notes, the activity log, every report the carrier commissioned and the internal valuation. Ask by letter or email so there is a record of the request and the date. What is in that file, and what is missing from it, is most of a bad faith case. A carrier that investigated properly has a file that shows it, and a carrier that did not has one that shows that instead.
- Move the whole conversation into writing. Phone calls leave the carrier’s note and nothing of yours. From here on, confirm every call by email the same day: who you spoke to, what they said, what they asked for and what they promised. It takes four lines. Six months later, that sequence of emails is the timeline, and the timeline is what makes a delay look like a decision rather than an accident.
- Send what they ask for, and keep proof you sent it. Requests for documents already supplied are one of the recurring patterns here, and the answer is not to refuse. Send it again, note that it was previously provided on a date, and keep the transmission record. A carrier repeatedly asking for what it already has builds your file rather than yours falling apart.
- Know which clock you are on. An injury claim, an uninsured motorist claim and a statutory bad faith claim each run on different deadlines, and the bad faith claim generally cannot even be brought until the underlying coverage and amount have been settled. Establishing which applies is the first hour of work, because a strong claim that missed a notice deadline is not a claim.
- Do not wait for the carrier to reconsider. Waiting is the one approach that only helps the insurer. Nothing about a file sitting open improves with time: the deadlines shorten, the memories go, the adjuster changes and the loss gets harder to document. If a claim has been open for months without a decision, or with a decision that does not match what the loss actually cost, that is the point to have it looked at.
Where these disputes come from in Miami
Miami-Dade produces a steady volume of serious injuries caused by drivers carrying policies nowhere near large enough to cover them, which is the exact setting this part of the law exists for.
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Small policies and serious injuries
A minimum policy against a catastrophic injury is the standard fact pattern here, and the whole question becomes whether the carrier protected its own insured.
- Whether the carrier told its insured about the demand and about the exposure
- Whether it obtained the medical records it needed to value the claim honestly
- What its own reserve and internal valuation said the case was worth
- Whether it asked for authority above the limits, and what it was told
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The demand, and the window it opens
Almost every excess judgment case is decided by a document written months earlier, when nobody was thinking about bad faith yet.
- A time-limited demand that is clear, complete and genuinely capable of acceptance
- The medical documentation served with it, so the carrier cannot claim it did not know
- The statutory safe harbor, where a tender inside 90 days of actual notice ends the exposure
- Proof of service and of exactly when the carrier received it
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Finding the other policies first
Before any of this matters, somebody has to establish that the small policy really is the whole picture, and in this county it frequently is not.
- Umbrella and excess policies, which are not volunteered
- An employer’s coverage where the driver was working at the time
- Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your own household policies
- Rental, rideshare and commercial policies layered over a personal one
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Claims against your own carrier
Where the recovery comes from your own uninsured motorist coverage, the relationship changes and so do the duties.
- A carrier adjusting a claim against its own money, and owing you good faith while it does
- Examinations under oath and document demands that go well beyond a liability claim
- A carrier’s own medical review that supported the claim while the payment did not
- Stacking across household vehicles, which is regularly overlooked
What insurers do that the statute addresses
- Valuing an injury against a software template rather than against the treating records
- Requesting documents that were already supplied, repeatedly, as a way of restarting the clock
- Denying a claim without an investigation that could reasonably support the denial
- Ignoring the carrier’s own medical review when it favored the claim
- Failing to acknowledge, investigate or decide within the periods the regulations set
What an insurer’s delay actually costs
Treatment that stopped because nothing was paying for it
The most common real-world harm and the least visible in a claim file. Somebody stops going to physical therapy, defers a procedure or does not fill a prescription because there is no way to pay, and the medical record then shows a gap the same carrier later points at. The gap and the reason for it are documentable, and documenting them at the time is far easier than explaining them afterward.
A settlement taken because waiting was no longer possible
The quietest harm in this practice. Somebody with no income and mounting bills accepts a fraction of what the claim was worth, not because they were persuaded but because the carrier outlasted them. A release signed under that pressure cannot be reopened, and the pressure itself is frequently the point of the delay.
Financial harm that outlasts the claim
Medical debt sent to collection, credit damaged, a mortgage that fell behind while a covered loss went unpaid, work missed for appointments that a carrier’s delay made necessary. These are consequences of the handling rather than of the original loss, and they are pleaded separately because they are proved separately.
What Florida law requires you to prove
The notice comes first, and the carrier gets 60 days
A statutory bad faith claim runs under Fla. Stat. § 624.155, and it starts with a civil remedy notice filed with the Department of Financial Services and served on the insurer. The notice is a condition precedent: no action lies until 60 days have passed, and none lies at all if the carrier pays or corrects the problem inside that window. Many do, which is the fastest good outcome available. It has to identify the statutory provisions, the facts and the policy language relied on, so a vague one hands the carrier an argument it should never have had.
What has to be shown, and what is not enough
The core ground is an insurer not attempting in good faith to settle a claim when, under all the circumstances, it could and should have done so had it acted fairly and honestly toward its insured and with due regard for their interests. It also reaches the unfair claim settlement practices listed in Fla. Stat. § 626.9541. Since 2023 it says plainly that mere negligence alone is insufficient, which raised the bar and did not remove it. A carrier that ignored its own file rather than mishandled it is still squarely inside the section.
The insurer has a way out, and so do you
Under the same statute a bad faith action does not lie where the insurer tenders the lesser of the policy limits or the amount demanded within 90 days of receiving actual notice of a claim supported by sufficient evidence. That is the safe harbor, and it is why the first demand is written carefully rather than casually. The statute also puts a duty of good faith on the insured and the claimant, and lets the trier of fact reduce damages where it was not met. Both directions matter before the first letter goes out.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide bad faith insurance page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Miami-Dade County
An excess judgment case is proved from the carrier’s own file, and the file was written before anyone knew it would be read.
- The complete claim file, including the activity log, round-table notes and reserve history
- The demand as served, the documentation attached to it and proof of the date received
- What the carrier told its own insured about the demand and the exposure, and when
- Every medical record the carrier held while the demand was open
- Its internal valuation, and the authority requested and granted
- A coverage search across umbrella, employer, rideshare, commercial and household policies
- The civil remedy notice, drafted to the statutory provisions and the policy language
- The judgment, and the assignment or consent arrangements that carry the claim forward
None of that is available after the fact if the demand was written loosely. The leverage in these cases is created at the start, in a document most people never see.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Miami is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled bad faith insurance claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Brett Yonon is who this firm puts on a catastrophic injury or a death in the family, and he has tried those cases to verdict. Full profile → -
Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile →
What a carrier says once you push back
Everything above describes what a carrier did. This is what it says once somebody stops accepting it, and none of these answers is the end of a conversation.
- We need these documents before we can proceed
- Send them, again, and note the date they were first provided. Repeated requests for material already in the file are one of the listed patterns, and every repetition strengthens the record rather than the excuse. What matters is that each request and each response is documented, because the sequence is what shows whether the carrier was investigating or stalling.
- This is what the claim is worth
- Ask what it was valued against. Injury claims are routinely valued by software fed with codes rather than by somebody reading the treating records, and property losses by an estimate no contractor will work to. Ask for the valuation and its inputs. Where the carrier’s own review supported the claim and the payment did not follow it, that gap is the case.
- That is not covered under the policy
- Ask which provision, in writing, and read it against the policy as issued rather than the summary. Denials rest on exclusions that do not apply, on conditions that were met, and on policy language quoted loosely more often than most people would expect. A denial the carrier cannot tie to specific wording is a different thing from a denial it can.
What a claim can include
The judgment above the policy limits
Where a carrier refused a real chance to settle within its insured’s limits and a judgment landed above them, the excess is the carrier’s to answer for rather than the policyholder’s.
Interest, and the cost of the delay
Interest on what was owed, and the documented financial consequences of not having it: collection activity, credit harm, a loan taken to cover a covered loss.
The difference between what was paid and what was owed
Where a carrier valued an injury against a template rather than against the records, the shortfall is the starting point. It is established from the treating physicians and the bills rather than from an argument about the adjuster.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Miami
A Miami-Dade bad faith case is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse, and the firm has an office on Brickell Avenue rather than a mailing address here. The demand that decides an excess judgment case is written in the first weeks of the underlying claim, which is a reason to have both in the same hands.
The firm is led by a Board Certified Civil Trial lawyer, a certification held by 861 attorneys in Florida against a membership over 109,000. Insurance companies keep their own records of which firms in a county actually try cases, and that record moves an offer further than anything a firm can say about itself.
There is no charge to ask. Our fee comes out of what we recover and nowhere else, and if the answer is that you do not have a case, that is the answer you will get.
Miami bad faith insurance questions
The at-fault driver only has minimum coverage. Is that all there is?
Not always. Where the insurer had a genuine chance to settle within those limits and did not take it, a judgment above the limits can be pursued against the carrier itself. There may also be additional policies: an umbrella, an employer’s policy if the driver was working, or your own uninsured motorist coverage. Finding them is part of the work rather than an afterthought.
What is a time-limited demand and why does it matter so much?
It is an offer to settle within the policy limits, supported by the medical documentation, open for a stated period. Its purpose is to give the carrier a real, documented opportunity to protect its insured. If the carrier takes it, the case resolves. If it does not, and a judgment later exceeds the limits, that refusal is what the bad faith claim rests on. A demand that was vague or impossible to accept gives the carrier a defense it should never have had.
Does the driver who hit me have to be sued first?
In the usual structure, yes. The bad faith claim against the carrier generally follows an excess judgment against its insured, which means the underlying case has to be tried or resolved first. There are arrangements that protect the defendant personally while the claim moves to the insurer, and how those are set up is technical and worth getting right early rather than late.
The policy limit is far too low for my injuries. Is anything possible?
Sometimes, and this is where bad faith becomes important. If the insurer had a reasonable opportunity to settle within the limit and failed to take it, its exposure may extend beyond that limit. It depends heavily on what was offered, when, and how the insurer responded.
Can I bring this against the other driver’s insurer?
Third party bad faith is recognized in Florida but it is different from a claim against your own insurer, and it typically arises after a judgment exceeds the available coverage. Which route applies depends on the posture of the underlying case, which is worth working through early.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1111 Brickell Avenue, 11th Floor, Miami, FL 33131.