Illinois abolished the independent tort of first-party bad faith in Cramer (1996), so a policyholder whose claim is wrongly denied is left with a breach-of-contract suit plus the statutory penalty in 215 ILCS 5/155. That gets you attorney fees, costs and a capped extra amount — no punitive damages, no emotional distress. Section 155 is not a standalone claim, and a judge, not a jury, decides whether the insurer was vexatious.
Three listing slots on this page are available to attorneys licensed in Illinois who handle disputes against insurers. Listings are paid advertising sold at a flat monthly rate. They are shown in the order they were purchased. We do not rank, score, endorse or recommend any attorney, and we have not assessed the quality of anyone’s work.
Phone referrals Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The referral is free; say you were referred by the service to get the reduced first-half-hour rate. Illinois has no certified-specialist programme — the Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognise certification of legal specialties, and any outside certification cited in advertising must carry a disclaimer.
Worth checking before you spend money on a lawyer. Two different measures exist, and they are not interchangeable — one is a real payment record, the other is a complaint count.
Health insurers selling on the federal marketplace must report how many claims they received and how many they refused. The figures are public and free to inspect.
The spread is the point. Two insurers selling comparable cover in the same state can refuse wildly different shares of what they are billed for. Look your own up before you assume your refusal was routine.
Source: CMS Transparency in Coverage public use files, plan year 2023 experience. Self-reported by insurers and not audited. Covers federal-marketplace plans only — not employer cover, and not state-run marketplaces. Post-service claims only.
There is no free public figure showing what share of home or auto claims any named insurer pays. Insurers do report it to regulators, but in most states that filing is confidential. Any table you see online quoting payout percentages for property insurers is either a paid commercial product or an estimate.
What is public is the complaint index — how many confirmed complaints a company generates against its share of the market. 1.00 is average. 3.00 means three times the complaints its size would predict.
Complaint indexes are published by state insurance departments and compiled by the NAIC. Figures move with both the company’s complaints and the wider market’s.
Under 50 Ill. Adm. Code 919 the insurer must acknowledge a communication within 15 working days and, once liability is determined and the amount undisputed, affirm or deny and tender payment within 30 days. Delay letters are then required at fixed intervals — 40 calendar days for auto collision, 60 for third-party auto property damage, 75 from reporting for fire — each carrying the mandatory Notice of Availability of the Department of Insurance.
Illinois deleted its own bad-faith tort. The Supreme Court recognised first-party bad faith in Ledingham, then took it back in Cramer — so the worst an insurer faces for a cynical denial is fees plus a penalty capped at $60,000, decided by a judge rather than a jury.
A complaint to the Illinois Department of Insurance costs nothing, creates a written record, and sometimes moves a stalled claim on its own. It is not a substitute for legal advice and it does not pause any deadline — but there is rarely a reason not to do it first.
This page is information, not legal advice. Insurance law differs by state and changes often. Nothing here creates a lawyer–client relationship, and no page can tell you whether your own claim is worth pursuing. If a deadline may be close, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state now rather than later — several of the deadlines described here start running on the date of the loss, not the date your claim was refused.
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