We are Chicago attorneys who provide free legal guidance and attorney referrals in Illinois.  If you want to speak with one of our lawyers for free, with no strings attached, give us a call at (312) 346-5320 or fill out our contact form and we will call you.

If you know anything about insurance it’s that for most businesses, you never use any of the things that you are paying for.  Some brokers will get you to pay an extra $100 a year for some obscure reason and you go along with it because “it’s only $100.”  Insurance companies make millions with these add ons as well as with stand-alone policies that are almost never acted on.

Then came COVID-19, and some of these obscure dangers that businesses get insurance for are actually happening.  The problem is that some insurance companies are refusing to pay.

There was an article in the paper the other day about a Chicago restaurant that purchased business interruption insurance that is supposed to provide payment if there is a “necessary suspension of operations during a period of restoration.”  In plain English, it seems to say that if you have to close up shop for reasons that you can’t control, the insurance company will compensate you for your losses.

Obviously restaurants in Chicago and elsewhere have been rocked by having to close their doors to dine-in guests.  That has been a necessary suspension of business because it comes from the Governor’s orders.  You’d think an insurance company would agree and just pay out what they owe.

Well that hasn’t happened in this case and others.  It’s similar to when insurance companies deny life insurance payments.  They don’t have much to lose by doing the wrong thing because if you get a lawyer they likely won’t have to pay much more than they are supposed to.

We’ve had a lot of success with denied life insurance claims and we are confident we can do the same if your business insurance isn’t paying what it owes you.  You should check whatever policies you have purchased to see if you are entitled to this benefit even if it wasn’t the main goal of what you purchased for your business.  And if you have it and it’s not being honored, please call us to learn how to resolve this problem.  In most cases, the lawyers we recommend work on a contingency basis which means you won’t have to pay them unless they win the case.  And these cases can be a little tricky as they often require an audit of what your actual losses are.