Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack has been recognized for our heavy involvement in the area of bad faith insurance litigation since we opened our doors in 1974. For more than 40 years we have been witness to an increasing number of insurance carriers throughout the country making it their practice to circumvent the law and breach the covenant of good faith and fair dealing with respect to handling claims made by their policyholders. This covenant of good faith and fair dealing is, by law, part of every contract of insurance. If you have had your claim denied for questionable reasons, please contact us.

Our firm has been instrumental in shaping California insurance law for more than thirty years and has served as legal counsel of record in a number of landmark decisions. Our attorneys have been retained as a Special Attorney General by the California Attorney General to prosecute on behalf of the State of California on a multi-billion dollar claim against a number of insurance companies and banks arising out of the sale of the assets of Executive Life Insurance Company.

In addition to shaping bad faith law through the appellate process, the firm has handled some of the largest dollar value cases in the bad faith area including the Northridge Earthquake class action against Allstate (12,000 homeowner claims), the State Farm Earthquake cases (over $100,000,000 recovery), the Mandalay Bay Hotel sinking and a series of underwriting fraud claims against Maryland Casualty on behalf of major construction firms in Nevada. The firm handled over 800 individual claims arising out of the Northridge Earthquake of 1994 and over 800 individual claims arising out of the California firestorms of 2004 and 2007.

Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack is at the forefront of this area of the law. Our attorneys working in the bad faith and insurance litigation division have been practicing together for a number of years and are often consulted by the state legislature, the California Department of Insurance and the California Attorney General's office. Some of our team's prominent cases include Kransco vs. American Surplus Lines Ins. Co., 23 Cal.4th 390 (2000), (holding the doctrine of comparative bad faith does not apply in California); Allegro vs. State Farm, 45 Cal.4th 1093 (1997), (unfair competition statute can be used in bad faith case); Unigard Ins. Co. vs. O'Flaherty (1995) (insurer can bring a legal malpractice action against lawyer it hires to defend insured).