Broadly speaking, there are two types of bad faith claims that may be alleged against an insurance company—traditional or non-institutional bad faith, and institutional bad faith. For the former, a policyholder would seek to hold an insurer liable for its acts or omissions that directly and adversely affected the policyholder. For example, in the third-party context, a policyholder may file a bad faith claim against its insurer if the insurer failed to settle a lawsuit against the policyholder within policy limits and a judgment is entered against the policyholder in excess of policy limits. Institutional bad faith, in contrast, goes beyond a single policyholder. In claims of institutional bad faith, the plaintiff or plaintiffs will attempt to demonstrate a company…
