If you know an insurance carrier name and policy number but not the policy limits.... Contact us for the policy limits of your known policy!
If you have a case where you do not know the insurance carrier name, policy number or policy limits.... Contact us, we will work to develop that missing information!
Northwest Investigative Services, Inc., now has the resources to attempt to locate homeowner, business, renter, vehicle, vessel, trucking, professional malpractice, premise liability, product liability, E&O, and umbrella type insurance coverage. If we accept the request then all research will be performed on a no hit / no fee basis.
Our mission is to provide you insurance coverage and/or limits information as of your date of loss, not as of the date of our research. We have the ability to find coverages from up to fifteen years ago but the more time that has lapsed since your date of loss the more costly this research will become and at the same time, the chances of success will slide downwards.
Pricing: Situation 1 / Policy Limits
Request: In a normal circumstance where we accept your
request… If you are aware of the target liability insurance carrier name AND you
have a policy and/or claim number and you request insurance limits information then
the fee will be $345.00, if we are successful.
There will be no fee if we are not successful. Note: This
price is valid if your client’s date of loss (DOL) is less than one year from your
request date. We can go back up to 15
years post DOL but it gets more expensive as time passes as we are looking for policy
limits as of your date of loss, not the date of research. If your date of loss is more than one year
post research request date then please ask us for a quote that would correspond
to your DOL. Note: A
hit would be us providing the insurance coverage limits that we believe to be
in force on your date of loss. If this
information proves to be incorrect then our liability would be limited to a refund
of the hit fee that was charged. (Please
read the “fine print” explanations listed below.)
Situation 2 / Liability Insurance Carrier Request: In a normal
situation where we accept your request… If you have no idea of who a liability
insurance carrier might be that would cover your incident, and we are
successful in finding a liability insurance carrier for your accident, then our
hit fee would be $550.00. There would be
no hit fee of $50.00 if we are not successful. This
price is valid if your client’s date of loss (DOL) is less than one year from your
request date. We can go back up to 15
years post DOL but it gets more expensive as time passes as we are looking for
insurance as of your date of loss, not the date of research. If your date of loss is more than one year
post research date then ask us for a quote that would correspond to your DOL. Note: A
hit would be us providing the insurance company name, address and usually a
phone number. You can contact them when knowing that info. If for any reasons our returned information
was not the liability carrier that we stated for your date of loss then our
liability would be limited to a full refund of the hit fee that was originally
charged. (Please read the “fine print”
explanations listed below. If your
action is from a motor vehicle action then please note the section below titled
“C) Motor Vehicle Accidents”.)
Situation 3 / Umbrella
Insurance Carrier Request: In a normal situation where we accept your
request… 3A: If you have an umbrella
carrier name AND claim and/or policy number and you request umbrella coverage
limits then the costs and conditions would be the same as Situation 1
above. 3B) If you are aware of the underlying liability
insurance carrier, policy / claim number, and limits and you request a research
for umbrella coverage and then if we are successful the same prices and
conditions apply as in Situation 2, above.
Note: We will not research for
umbrella policy coverage on a no hit / no fee basis or the $50.00 no hit fee unless the underlying
coverage is known and confirmed to be a number that is at least in the general
area a 250/500 or single limit 300 policy.
It is our experience that if the underlying coverages are less than
these figures then most if not all insurance companies will not allow an
umbrella coverage to be purchased. In these
scenarios a no-hit fee of at least 50% of the hit fee would be apply (Please read the “fine print” explanations
listed below.)
The following is the “fine
print” concerning the above explanations:
A) Liability / Refund Information: A hit for any of the above situations would
be us providing you what we feel to be accurate information as of your date of
loss. If this information proves to be
incorrect then you agree that our liability is limited to only the refund of
the amount charged as our hit fee.
B) Exclusions: We
do not find out about and as such do not deal with any possible policy exclusions. We are looking for a liability or umbrella
coverage that would cover your incident and it would be a hit if we find it,
regardless of any policy exclusions. As
example: If we find insurance coverage
on the defendant vehicle and as it turns out the defendant driver was excluded from
the policy then a full hit fee would still apply. Or, in a dog bite case we find insurance coverage
for the defendant residence but as it turns out that the target dog was already
excluded from the policy then a full hit fee would still apply.
C)
Motor Vehicle Accidents: If the defendant driver was
cited for no insurance then we will not look for insurance on a no hit / no fee
basis until the “no insurance” court case is adjudicated. The reason is that when a person receives a no
insurance ticket in Washington they are also advised that if they show up with
proof of insurance on the accident date then no court action is required and
the court clerk can dismiss the $550.00 ticket on the spot in exchange for a
$25.00 administrative fee. If the
defendant then has the fee knocked down to $25.00 then your office or mine can
go to the court to determine insurance for a much less fee than we would charge
going the long way as described above. But,
if the defendant does not exercise the option of having the fine reduced over $500
then we would assume that they truly did not have insurance on the date of loss
and we will not perform our insurance coverage research on a no hit / no fee
basis. If you still want us to go
forward in this type of situation then we would have a no-hit fee of 50% of the
usual hit fee. We will request a copy of
the basic accident report for all traffic accidents. Note:
Washington law does not require motorcycles to be insured so no citation
would be issued to their drivers for lack of insurance coverage at the time of
the accident.
D)
Turnaround Time: It can take up to one month,
sometimes a little longer, for us to develop insurance coverage information. Actually, the hits usually come faster than
that, it is when we can't find coverage that we take a while before we finally
give up and say that we could not find coverage.
E)
Request Cancelation: You should exhaust all other
means such as letters to the defendant(s), discussions with the adjuster, etc.,
before asking us to research an insurance request. You will still be charged a research fee of at least $100.00 even
if you stumble upon your answer from another direction before we have completed
our task, the case settles in the meantime, etc.
F)
No Hit Response: If our return is that we cannot find
coverage as of your date of loss, this does not mean that there is no coverage. It might just mean that we could not find the
coverage that may actually exist.
Serving the Legal Community Since 1974 from an Office Near Tacoma, WA
