Chicago Personal Injury Attorney Scott D. DeSalvo discusses Insurance bad faith in Illinois.

In some states, like Florida, if an insurance company refuses to pay anything, even on a valid claim where the injuries are very serious and who caused those injuries is very clear, you can actually take the insurance company directly to court, sue them directly for their bad faith in refusing to make any offer at all, when any reasonable person would know that an offer should have been made.

Attorneys call this a third party bad faith case, and like in any case, a judge or jury would hear the evidence, and decide whether what the insurance company did was okay or not.

But in Illinois, third party bad faith cases against your opponent's insurance company are prohibited by law.

In Illinois, insurance companies got their billions of dollars together, and made sure that our legislature wrote laws that protect the insurance companies. That means in Illinois law, under Illinois law, you can't bring a third party bad faith case against an insurance company, even if their claims practices are outrageous, even if they lie to you, they're rude to you, they misrepresent things to you, and even if they refuse to offer you a nickel on a very serious injury or death case, and believe me, the insurance companies are taking advantage of this by refusing to pay on valid claims, because they know, under Illinois law, they can't be sued directly.

Because there is rarely any legal consequences for insurance companies and their lawyers for bad conduct, they sometimes try to get away with anything they can.  Going it alone in a personal injury claim is probably a mistake.  Consider hiring a lawyer.  Most injury lawyers work on a contingency basis, meaning they only get paid if they win.