November 20, 2009:  A Galveston County jury found that Zurich American Insurance Company acted in bad faith in delaying and denying a workers’ compensation claim of a 44 year old Galld sandblaster injured on the job in October 2007.

The jury found that Zurich unreasonably delayed income  benefits for four months, and delayed Doyle Raizner client Jerome Ryan’s medical care for his injured shoulder.  Zurich failed to obtain medical records from Mr. Ryan’s doctors, claimed that Mr. Ryan could not chose his own treating physician, and refused to pay him income benefits or for his medical care until ordered to do so by the Texas Department of Insurance.

The jury in Galveston County Court at Law No. 3, Hon. Roy Quintanilla presiding, awarded 1.384 million in damages, including $500,000 in punitive damages.

Jeff Raizner: (Transcript from video)

One of the biggest problems that we’ve seen from the insurance companies is what happens when they send their adjusters out there in the beginning. We are seeing this from many clients and from looking at everybody’s home and businesses. What happens is the insurance companies come out there the first time and give a clearly low ball estimate.

No reasonable insurance adjuster, no reasonable insurance company would look at a house with a roof that is gone, completely damaged and say it would cost a thousand dollars to fix this. Then they come out a second time with a different adjuster and maybe provide a little more money, but it is still not appropriate and still not the right amount.

What we do when we get involved is send out an independent adjuster who does what the insurance company was supposed to have done the first time, looks at everything, actually climbs on the roof, actually looks at the walls, looks at the outside, spends some time there and provides a fair and a honest estimate of what the damages are.

We then get that to the insurance company and sometimes they will pay a little bit more voluntarily and sometimes they won’t. Most of the time, the case will have to end up in a lawsuit and that is when we can get into the position where we can get the results for you.