Lead Practice Area: Insurance Litigation
Summary: Our client, a major automobile insurance company, was sued by the plaintiff medical provider to recover first-party no-fault benefits. Prior to the litigation, our client requested verification in the form of the examination under oath of the medical provider in order to investigate the claim. The medical provider failed to acknowledge or respond to the requested verification and subsequently sued in civil court to collect on the unpaid bills. In the published decision, the court agreed with our argument that a failure to respond to the verification request resulted in a waiver of plaintiff's defenses and estopped plaintiff from asserting any defect in the verification requests.
This decision extends the previously existing case law to impose the penalty of waiver and estoppel upon plaintiffs who fail to address verification requests from insurance companies. As no-fault litigation often depends on the respective party's practices during the verification phase, our firm has generated favorable case law which will benefit our client and other insurance companies in future litigation.