Two cases handed down this year may signal the end of the routine bad faith letter typically sent out in automobile cases in the third party, UM, and UIM contexts.
In the bad faith litigation of Zappile v. Amex, 928 A.2d 251 (Pa. Super. 2007), the Superior Court rejected many of the allegations bad faith conduct routinely asserted by claimants in UM/UIM cases. The court noted that it was not bad faith for the UIM carrier to refuse to issue partial payments to the claimant on undisputed parts of the claim, to investigate the facts of a subsequent accident sustained by the claimant, or to increase its settlement offers where the claimant refused to officially negotiate off of his repeated policy limits demands. The Zappile court also noted that delays in moving the case to arbitration were also not per se acts of bad faith, particularly where some of the delays were attributable to the claimant
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