Class Actions and Class Certification

Insurance Industry Class Certification and Class Actions

Property casualty insurers have faced policyholder class actions relating to coverage and claims settlement disputes, as well as class action lawsuits regarding labor rates from auto body repair shops. Life insurers have faced policyholder class actions regarding sales methods, asset management, disclosures, and contract pricing revisions covering life insurance, annuities, and long-term care policies. Health insurers have faced policyholder allegations of deceptive advertising, improper denial of coverage, and improper limitation of coverage, as well as health services provider allegations of improper claims handling and payment practices. The class certification stage typically involves questions of class definition, common impact, and formulaic approaches to damages. Class action litigation often involves issues of liability and damages.

NERA insurance experts combine deep industry knowledge with expertise in economics, finance, statistics, and accounting to address insurance-related class action litigation. In the class certification stage, many disputes require a thorough understanding of the insurance contracts and processes, and work with samples of policyholders or samples of claim files. NERA’s experts have experience in generating random samples, extracting information from claims files, and working with claims file data on class certification issues. In damages analyses, NERA has the capability to work with large data sets and combine data from different sources. Our experts have the quantitative skills to calculate damages for insurance products including complex financial products and, when needed, we have experience working with actuaries and other claims experts.