Tennessee is one of the harder states for a policyholder. There is no common-law tort of bad faith against your own insurer, and in 2011 the legislature shut off the Consumer Protection Act route as well. What is left is the policy itself plus one old statute that adds a penalty of up to 25% — and only if you made a formal written demand and then waited 60 days.
Three listing slots on this page are available to attorneys licensed in Tennessee 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.
Tennessee runs no statewide referral service. The TBA page points you to local bar schemes instead — Nashville 615-242-6546, Knoxville 865-522-7501, Chattanooga 423-756-3222, and a Memphis Bar Association directory. Tennessee certifies specialists only through ABA-accredited national boards — civil trial, civil pretrial practice, professional liability and others. There is no insurance-law specialty, so look for civil trial certification and a track record against carriers.
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.
By regulation (Rules 0780-01-05), the insurer must acknowledge your claim within 30 days and reply to other pertinent letters within 30 days; accept or deny liability within 60 days of receiving completed proofs of loss; and pay within 30 days of accepting, where the amount is not in dispute. If it needs longer it must write to you at 60 days and every 60 days after. These are regulator’s rules — breaking them gets the insurer in trouble with the Department, but does not by itself give you a lawsuit.
The bad-faith penalty may not apply to your car insurance at all. In Giles v. GEICO (2021) the Court of Appeals held § 56-7-105 does not reach automobile policies — including an underinsured-motorist claim — because the statute was written for policies that bear interest when due, like life and fire. The reasoning comes from Supreme Court cases decided in 1964 and 1974.
A complaint to the Tennessee Department of Commerce and 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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