Claims File Timeline Analysis Anchors a Bad Faith Claims Handling Claim
A commercial property owner sued its insurer for bad faith after a covered water damage claim remained unresolved for more than a year despite repeated documentation submissions, alleging the delay caused avoidable secondary damage and lost rental income, in a dispute over additional damages beyond the underlying claim. The insurer retained an insurance expert with claims handling and industry claims-practice standards experience to reconstruct the claim's full handling timeline, including adjuster assignments, document requests, and internal escalation records, against industry-standard timeframes for comparable commercial property claims. The expert found the initial assessment phase was consistent with industry norms, but that the claim then sat without substantive adjuster activity for more than five months following a change in the assigned adjuster, a gap well outside standard practice. That finding was pivotal in establishing the bad faith claim's viability and contributed to a settlement covering the additional secondary damages.