Where bad faith sounds in tort, punitive damages may be available on a showing of malice, oppression, fraud, or conscious disregard for the insured's rights, typically requiring clear and convincing evidence.
Awards are subject to constitutional ratio limits and state statutory caps.
Alternative Names:
Punitive Damages in Bad Faith, Bad Faith Punitives
Why it Matters?
Punitive exposure is what converts a bad faith case from a quantifiable excess judgment into an open-ended one, and evidence of institutional practice rather than individual error is what supports it. Claims handling guidelines emphasizing closure rates, compensation tied to settlement authority conservation, and patterns across multiple files are the exhibits that produce these awards. That is why bad faith discovery reaches beyond the individual claim.
Frequently Confused with
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
What supports punitive damages against an insurer?
Are punitive awards against insurers insurable?
