We want to take time today to address the issue of filing a claim with Citizens Insurance. This is information you need to know when your insurance company when your insurance company happens to be Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.
Filing a Claim With Citizens Insurance: What You Need to Know-Part 1
The largest insurance company in the state of Florida is the public insurance company: Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. For the last several years, we have handled literally thousands of claims filed by insurers with Citizens Property Insurance. In a way, it’s a little like litigating against city hall.
You see, if you really think about it, the CEO of Citizens is like the governor of the state of Florida. He is like the governor because he’s the one who ultimately is responsible for the success of that insurance company. If you look at the law that created Citizens, it specifically identifies that Citizens is supposed to act like an insurance company.
Well, there’s one thing they don’t tell you about Citizens, and that is that you can’t sue Citizens for bad faith, which means that if Citizens deliberately denies your claim or delays payment or underpays you, you cannot litigate them in the context of a bad faith claim. Which would make them responsible for reputation damages, or other things that they may have damaged as a result in the delay in repaying your claim. But we have a lot of experience in dealing with Citizens. We’ve litigated against Citizens on claims that involved tens of millions of dollars on an individual property. We’ve litigated against Citizens in cases that took years to resolve. We’ve litigated against Citizens when Citizens admitted that they owed money to our clients but refused to pay.
We like the challenge of litigating against Citizens Property Insurance and understand how to take the company apart brick by brick. If you are filing a claim with Citizens Property Insurance, make sure that you are familiar with dealing with Citizens and that you have made a claim to hire a lawyer that knows how to deal with a company as big and as massive and, potentially, as powerful as Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.
If you’re a Citizens insured or have questions about Citizens’ coverage, please go to our website at www.CorlessBarfield.com or give us a call. You take care of your property, and we’ll take care of Citizens.
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