This page was written, edited, and reviewed & approved by Rusty Smith following our comprehensive editorial guidelines. Rusty Smith, the Founding Attorney, has 25 years of legal experience as a personal injury attorney. Our last Published date shows when this page was last updated & reviewed.
Your insurance company owes you more than a check. Under Oklahoma law, it owes you good faith.
When a carrier denies a valid claim, stalls an investigation, or offers far less than your policy promises, that conduct can give rise to a legal claim of its own. An Oklahoma insurance lawyer at Smith Barkett Law Group can review what your insurer did, what your policy actually covers, and what the law entitles you to pursue. We represent policyholders statewide from our offices in Tulsa and Muskogee.
Our attorneys bring more than 75 years of combined litigation experience to these disputes, including verdicts in bad-faith denial and bad-faith foreclosure cases. Call 918-582-6900 for a free case evaluation.
We handle the side of insurance law most people never expect to need: The dispute that begins after the claim is filed. Our team reviews the policy, reconstructs the claim file, and identifies where the carrier’s handling deviates from Oklahoma law.
Oklahoma recognized this duty in 1977. In Christian v. American Home Assurance Co., the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that an insurer has an implied duty to deal fairly and act in good faith with its insured. Violating that duty, the court held, gives rise to an action in tort.
That distinction carries real weight. A breach-of-contract claim recovers what the policy owed, while a bad-faith tort claim can reach further into consequential losses and, in a proper case, punitive damages.
The court also set a limit. Losing a coverage dispute is not bad faith on its own; liability requires a clear showing that the insurer unreasonably withheld payment in bad faith.
Title 36 of the Oklahoma Statutes lists conduct the Legislature treats as unfair claim settlement practice. Under 36 O.S. § 1250.5, that conduct includes:
Insurers sometimes argue that an isolated mistake cannot amount to a violation. Oklahoma law says otherwise.
Under 36 O.S. § 1250.3, conduct qualifies as an unfair claim settlement practice in either of two ways. It counts when committed flagrantly and with conscious disregard for the act, or when it occurs often enough to indicate a general business practice.
Either path is enough on its own. One flagrant act, committed knowingly, can support the claim without any showing of a broader pattern.
Oklahoma does not leave claim timing to the carrier’s discretion. Specific deadlines apply, and a missed date becomes evidence.
For property and casualty claims, 36 O.S. § 1250.7 sets the schedule:
Health claims run on a different clock. Under 36 O.S. § 1219, insurers must reimburse clean claims within 45 calendar days of receipt, and the Oklahoma Insurance Department requires written notice of any defect in a claim within 30 days.
When those dates slip without explanation, the delay itself becomes part of the case.
Every bad faith case starts with the benefits the policy should have paid. From there, Oklahoma law allows recovery of the losses caused by the denial itself.
Depending on the evidence, those losses can include:
Oklahoma sorts punitive damages into tiers. Under 23 O.S. § 9.1, the ceiling depends on what the jury finds:
We do not promise any of these outcomes. What our attorneys can do is build the record that supports the highest category the facts will bear.
A denial letter is not the end of the claim. What you do in the weeks after it arrives shapes what a lawyer can prove later.
A regulatory complaint and a lawsuit run on separate tracks. Filing one does not replace the other, and you are not required to choose between them.
Two different deadlines can apply to the same insurance dispute, and they are not the same length.
That gap catches people. A policyholder who waits four years may still hold a contract claim, while the bad-faith claim, along with the punitive damages that ride on it, has already expired. Our attorneys review both clocks at the outset of every case.
No law requires one. Carriers do have attorneys, adjusters, and internal standards designed to control what they pay, and policyholders often find the terms of that exchange uneven. We read the policy, identify which provisions actually apply, and press for the file that explains how the decision was reached.
The case evaluation is free. Fee arrangements vary by the type of matter involved, so we put the terms in writing before you decide whether to move forward.
Possibly. Oklahoma’s claim-handling deadlines make unexplained delay a regulated act rather than a simple inconvenience. When a carrier misses statutory deadlines without justification, that delay can support a bad faith claim even if payment eventually arrives.
No. The department handles regulatory oversight, while a court handles compensation. A complaint can generate useful documentation about how your claim was processed, though the department cannot award you damages.
The duty of good faith attaches to the relationship between insurer and policyholder, not to any single product. Homeowners, commercial property, life, health, disability, and auto policies can all give rise to a claim.
Timing depends on the size of the loss, the carrier’s posture, and whether a lawsuit becomes necessary. Some claims resolve once a demand letter reframes the coverage question; others require litigation and take considerably longer.
When your own insurer becomes the obstacle, you are no longer arguing about paperwork. You are enforcing a contract, and Oklahoma law gives you real tools to do it.
Our firm has tried civil cases across Oklahoma for decades, with verdicts including $2,250,000 in a bad-faith foreclosure matter and $900,000 in a bad-faith denial case. Founding attorneys Michael Barkett and Rusty Smith bring more than 75 years of combined litigation experience to that work.
Call an Oklahoma insurance lawyer at Smith Barkett Law Group at 918-582-6900, or reach our Tulsa office to schedule a free case evaluation. We will review your policy, your denial letter, and Oklahoma law as it applies to the company that issued it.
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