Can I Sue the Insurance Company?

In most car accident cases, you cannot sue the at-fault driver’s insurance company directly. Florida law generally requires you to bring your claim against the at-fault driver, and their insurance company defends the claim and pays any settlement or judgment on the driver’s behalf, up to the policy limit.

When You Can Sue an Insurer Directly

• Your own PIP claim: Since PIP is a contract between you and your insurer, you can sue your own insurance company directly if it wrongfully denies or underpays your PIP benefits.
• Uninsured or underinsured motorist claims: These claims are also against your own insurer under your own policy, so a direct claim or lawsuit against your insurer is appropriate here as well.
• Bad faith claims: If a judgment against the at-fault driver exceeds their policy limit and their insurer unreasonably failed to settle within those limits when it had the chance to, you may later be able to bring a bad faith claim directly against that insurer.

Why the Process Works This Way

Florida generally does not allow injured parties to name the at-fault driver’s liability insurer as a defendant in the original lawsuit. This is sometimes called a nonjoinder rule. The practical effect is that your case is technically against the driver, while the insurance company controls the defense and pays the bill behind the scenes.

How a Bad Faith Claim Actually Plays Out

Bad faith cases follow a specific sequence. First, your attorney pursues the underlying claim against the at-fault driver and, if the injuries are serious enough, a jury verdict or judgment is entered that exceeds the driver’s policy limit. If the insurer had a reasonable opportunity to settle within those limits beforehand and failed to do so in good faith, perhaps by delaying without justification, failing to properly investigate the claim, or ignoring a clear demand within the policy limit, the insured driver can then assign their bad faith claim against the insurer to the injured party.

At that point, the insurer can potentially be held responsible for the full judgment, not just the original policy limit. This is why insurers generally have a strong incentive to settle within limits when liability and damages are clear, and why documenting every settlement demand and the insurer’s response along the way matters so much.

Why This Distinction Still Matters to Your Case

Even though you are not suing the insurer by name in a typical claim, everything about your case, from the settlement negotiations to how aggressively the claim is defended, is driven by that insurance company. Understanding who actually has the checkbook and what leverage exists to push them toward a fair settlement or expose them to a bad faith claim is central to how these cases are built and resolved.