Why Choose Us
Leverty & Associates Law Chtd.’s attorneys have been helping Nevadans for over 40 years.
Thanks to our 100 years of combined experience, we have recovered over $150 million in client compensation and claims. We also have over 1,000 satisfied clients, including E.J. from Reno, Nevada, who said the following about our firm:
“The attorneys at Leverty & Associates Law Chtd. helped me tremendously after I was hit by a car when I was walking my dogs. I was referred to them by a good friend, and I am very happy with the results they obtained.”
Our insurance coverage attorneys in Las Vegas have 50 years of combined litigation, negotiation, and trial experience.
Gene Leverty, one of the lead insurance attorneys at Leverty & Associates law Chartered, earned his Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. Over the past four decades, he has developed a reputation for excellence in Nevada and the U.S.
Because he was Chief Deputy Insurance Commissioner of the State of Nevada and a partner in a Beverly Hills multi-state law firm for 10 years representing insurers, he has unique expertise addressing insurance coverage issues.
Gene has held an AV Martindale Hubbell rating (the most prestigious attorney rating) for over 25 years and is a long-time member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum for obtaining several multi-million jury settlements and verdicts. He is licensed to practice in the following jurisdictions:
- Nevada and California state courts
- The U.S. District Court for the State of Nevada
- The U.S. Central District of California
- The U.S. Northern District of California
- The U.S. Eastern District of California
- The U.S. Southern District of California
- District Court (Florida)
- U.S. District Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)
- The U.S. Supreme Court.
Additionally, Gene has worked on many notable cases, including Pak v. Farmers Insurance (a 2007 nationwide class action), Woosely v. State Farm, 117 Nev. 182, 18 P.3D 317 (2001), and Alliance Ins. Co. v. Gagnon, 109 Nev. 990, 860 P.2d 720 (1993).
How We Can Help
Leverty & Associates Law Chtd.’s Las Vegas, NV insurance lawyers can help you get the insurance coverage you need by doing the following:
- Talking to you to learn how and why the insurance coverage issues happened
- Explaining how insurance works in Nevada
- Evaluating whether your insurance company has acted in bad faith
- Helping you prove and claim your financial losses
- Consider all avenues to resolve the dispute, including arbitration, mediation, and trial.
What Is Bad Faith?
Under Nevada law, insurance companies are deemed to act in bad faith when they refuse to indemnify or defend a policyholder without a reasonable basis. They are also deemed to act in bad faith when they fail to pay claims on time and act fairly and honestly throughout all stages of a claim, from investigation and negotiation to defense and settlement.
That is because Nevada law requires all parties to act in good faith when signing, negotiating, and executing insurance policies. Accordingly, per Allstate Ins. Co. v. Miller (2009), Benchmark Ins. Co. v. Sparks (2011), and United Nat’l Ins. Co. v. Frontier Ins. Co. (2004), insurers have the duty to defend policyholders as soon as they receive notice of a potentially covered risk. If there are any doubts about what the parties intended to be “covered risks” in the insurance policy, the court will resolve the doubts in the policyholder’s favor.
Examples of Insurer Bad Faith
If your insurer has done any of the following, they may be acting in bad faith:
- Refusing to conduct a fair and prompt investigation of a valid claim
- Mispresenting or misleading you about the insurance policy provisions
- Failing to communicate with you about a claim (i.e., avoiding your phone calls and emails)
- Underpaying or delaying payment on a valid claim for no good reason
- Deliberately burying you with paperwork to delay a claim or confuse you
- Failing to act in your best interests.
If you’re not sure whether your insurer has been acting in bad faith, talk to a Leverty & Associates Law Chartered insurance lawyer in Las Vegas, NV.
What Damages Are Available When An Insurance Company Acts in Bad Faith?
If your insurance company has acted in bad faith by failing to cover your valid claim, you can sue them. The following damages are available when you sue an insurance company for acting in bad faith:
- The money the insurance company should have paid in the first place
- Damages for emotional distress
- The cost of hiring an attorney to advance and defend the claim
- Punitive damages (if you can prove that the insurer was acting in a malicious or high-handed manner).
How Long Do I Have to Bring A Bad Faith Claim Against My Insurance Company?
Time is of the essence in Nevada bad faith insurance cases. Policyholders only have a four-year statute of limitations or deadline to advance bad faith claims against their insurers. The four years start running after the insurance company’s bad faith action.
Four years is not a lot of time, especially when you have a lot of injuries and property damage. A skilled insurance lawyer in Las Vegas NV can prepare and file all your paperwork on and ahead of time so you can focus on getting your life back together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Insurance coverage can be confusing for many. Here are our answers to frequently asked questions about this topic:
Yes. In Nevada, an insurance company has a duty to defend its policyholder as soon as it receives notice of a potentially covered risk. They must continue to defend the policyholder until the claim’s final resolution.
According to Nevada law, an insurance company acts in bad faith when it:
- Refuses to pay benefits to the policyholder
- Knows or should have known that the denial is unreasonable.
An unavoidable mistake or wrong yet reasonable determination that a risk is not covered is usually not bad faith.
Your lawyer will talk to you about the types of evidence you need to advance a bad faith lawsuit. However, most cases require the following:
- Correspondence, such as emails and phone conversations, from the insurer that shows misconduct or patterns of misconduct
- Interrogatories and depositions of the insurance representatives and adjusters
- The insurance contract
- Receipts, medical reports, and other written records that show the extent of your property damage, financial losses, and injuries.
The kinds of damages you can receive depend on the facts of your case, but you can generally expect to receive the following:
- The amount that the insurer should have paid you under the policy
- Lawyer’s fees for handling this case
- Amounts that you had to pay out-of-pocket to defend the claim
- Damages for the emotional distress caused by the insurance company’s bad faith.
Under Nevada Revised Statutes 42.001, policyholders can obtain punitive damages in bad faith insurance cases if the insurer has acted with malice, fraud, or oppression.
This can happen when an insurance company consciously disregards the harm that can result from its failure to defend its policyholder or investigate or pay a claim.
We hope that these answers help you to better understand insurance coverage in Las Vegas. We recognize that this list is not comprehensive, and you probably have a lot more questions.
How A Las Vegas Personal Injury Lawyer Can Help
If you have suffered emotional and financial damages because your insurer acted in bad faith, Leverty & Associates Law Chtd.’s Las Vegas insurance coverage issues attorneys can help.
Our bad faith Las Vegas, NV, insurance lawyers regularly hold insurance companies responsible for prioritizing profit over policyholders. If you have enough evidence to prove that your insurer has acted in bad faith, we may be able to help you obtain compensation for your out-of-pocket expenses for property damage, medical bills, and more.
Interested in learning more about how we can help you? Call our Las Vegas office at (702) 507-0201 for a free consultation.
Attorney Patrick Leverty
With his master’s in insurance law, Patrick routinely helps individuals and businesses who are having issues with their insurance company. He also has extensive experience with personal injury actions, complex tort actions, product liability matters, and class actions. Patrick Leverty is rated AV by Martindale Hubbell (the highest rating) and has been granted membership in the Million Dollar Advocate Forum, and Multi-Million Dollar Advocate Forum. Patrick Leverty has been certified as a Personal Injury Specialist by the State Bar of Nevada. [ Attorney Bio ]
