Insurance bad faith

Insurance bad faith is a legal term of art unique to the law of the United States (but with parallels elsewhere, particularly Canada) that describes a tort claim that an insured person may have against an insurance company for its bad acts. Under the law of most jurisdictions in the United States, insurance companies owe a duty of good faith and fair dealing to the persons they insure. This duty is often referred to as the "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing" which automatically exists by operation of law in every insurance contract. If an insurance company violates that covenant, the insured person (or "policyholder") may sue the company on a tort claim in addition to a standard breach of contract claim. The contract-tort distinction is significant because as a matter of public policy, punitive or exemplary damages are unavailable for contract claims, but are available for tort claims. In addition, consequential damages for breach of contract are traditionally subject to certain constraints not applicable to tort actions (see Hadley v. Baxendale). The result is that a plaintiff in an insurance bad faith case may be able to recover an amount larger than the original face value of the policy, if the insurance company's conduct was particularly egregious.

Most laws regulating the insurance industry in the U.S. are state-specific. In 1869, the Supreme Court of the United States held, in Paul v. Virginia (1869), that United States Congress did not have the authority to regulate insurance under its power to regulate commerce.

In the 1930s and 1940s, a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions broadened the interpretation of the Commerce Clause in various ways, so that federal jurisdiction over interstate commerce could be seen as extending to insurance. In March 1945, the United States Congress expressly reaffirmed its support for state-based insurance regulation by passing the McCarran–Ferguson Act (found at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1011-15) which held that no law that Congress passed should be construed to invalidate, impair or supersede any law enacted by a State regarding insurance. As a result, nearly all regulation of insurance continues to take place at the state level.

...
Wikipedia