Pennsylvania and New Jersey Insurance Broker Liability Lawyers

Pennsylvania and New Jersey Insurance Broker Liability Lawyers

Our Attorneys with Experience in Handling Insurance Broker Liability Matters Fight to Make Policyholders Whole

When you buy insurance using a broker or agent as the middleman in communicating and paying the insurance carrier, you’re counting on the broker to properly perform their job. You could be left on the hook for substantial sums if the insurance you relied on the broker to procure was not delivered.

Insured policyholders have legal recourse against negligent insurance brokers. The experienced broker liability attorneys at Anapol Weiss can assist you in securing the insurance benefits that you would have been afforded had the broker performed their job correctly. For a free case review, contact us today.

What an Insurance Broker’s Professional Negligence Means for Policyholders

When a fire or natural disaster destroys your home or an injury occurs at your place of business, you turn to the insurance coverage you carefully selected and purchased with the help of your broker. If that coverage turns out to be insufficient or full of gaps and exclusions you were not appropriately warned about, your broker could be to blame. An attorney experienced in handling professional liability matters brought against the operative broker or insurance agency can help hold the responsible party liable for these losses.

We all purchase insurance such as homeowner’s or renter’s insurance in the personal/first-party context or commercial general liability or professional liability insurance in the commercial context for peace of mind in hopes of never needing to use it. Nothing makes a crisis worse than having to discover that the peace of mind you previously enjoyed was based on a false pretense because your broker failed to procure the appropriate coverages and, consequently, you are without adequate coverage to compensate you or your business for the loss at hand.

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Insurance Broker Professional Negligence Cases in Philadelphia, PA

Throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, policyholders whose personal or commercial lines insurance policies didn’t live up to brokers’ promises find themselves shouldering a heavy financial burden.

Several of the most commonly seen mistakes made by brokers in the insurance industry that can lead to devastating consequences include:

• Failing to admonish clients regarding formidable policy limitations or exclusions
• Failing to forward clients’ premium payments to the insurer, causing the policy to lapse
• Failing to purchase primary and umbrella or excess insurance coverage as directed by their clients
• Failing to accurately complete an insurance application and thereby opening the door for the policy to be rescinded
• Making premium driven decisions without adequately explaining the risks of such decisions to clients
• Purchasing coverage with insufficient policy limits
• Failing to secure specialized types of insurance coverage that are available on the standard insurance market as opposed to the less regulated surplus lines market
• Failing to advise on the availability of optional or additional coverage as requested by the client

Our attorneys help clients hold negligent brokers accountable for the losses caused by the failure to procure the appropriate insurance throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Suing Negligent Insurance Brokers

To get the compensation you deserve from this complex legal claim, you’re going to need help from an attorney well-versed in handling professional liability claims.

Elements of Professional Negligence Claims Against Insurance Brokers

For your lawsuit to be successful, the attorney handling your broker liability case must establish the four elements that constitute negligence under the law.

1. Duty of care to the policyholder
2. Breach of duty
3. Causation
4. Damages

The Challenge of Establishing an Insurance Broker’s Duty of Care

Establishing the duty of care the insurance broker legally owes you is difficult. This, in turn, makes it hard to establish a breach of duty.

Unlike an insurance agent, who works as a representative of a specific insurance company, a broker works with different companies to provide insurance options to the person seeking coverage. As such, they are generally considered to be acting in the interests of you, the person buying a policy.

While this would seem to constitute at least some duty of care, establishing this element is more complicated than that. A few jurisdictions impose more extensive duties on insurance brokers and may even recognize them as serving as risk managers to their clients. However, in many areas, the legal duty brokers have to policyholders who purchase insurance coverage through them is limited.

Unfortunately, some courts in Pennsylvania have found that brokers don’t have a duty to advise clients on their insurance needs unless a specific confidential relationship exists. This is all the more reason a seasoned broker liability attorney is needed.

The Complex Demands of Establishing Duty and Breach of Duty

The challenges of establishing the broker’s duty of care make it all the more important to partner with the right counsel. A knowledgeable attorney can build a strong case, backed by available evidence and testimony of expert witnesses, that demonstrates the obligations the broker had to you and how their actions or omissions fell below the standard of care.

Causation and Damages in an Insurance Broker Liability Claim

Your lawyer must show that the broker’s breach of their duty toward you directly caused the consequences, financial and otherwise, of not having sufficient (or any) insurance coverage.

Finally, your attorney needs to present and document the full array of damages you suffered because of the broker’s negligence. Such damages are case specific. By way of example, in the first-party context, damages may include the costs to rebuild a destroyed home for which you had insufficient coverage. In the third-party context, damages may include the value of a claim arising out of an injury at your business for which you wrongly believed your business would be covered when named as a defendant in a personal injury lawsuit.

When the insurance gaps, exclusions, or insufficient coverage has left you with significant losses, the damages for which you can seek compensation, too, are significant.

Get Help From Our Broker Liability Lawyers at No Upfront Cost

If you’re concerned that pursuing a brokerage action will only add to your troubles, you should know that our insurance lawyers review potential cases at no cost and represent clients on a contingency fee basis. This means that we only get paid if you are compensated.

Contact an Insurance Broker Liability Lawyer Today at Anapol Weiss for a Free Case Evaluation

Policyholders affected by gaps in their insurance shouldn’t have to pay for their brokers’ mistakes. For help from an insurance broker liability lawyer in Philadelphia, PA, contact Anapol Weiss online or call (866) 930-2217 today.