Ever notice how often lawyers are the heroes of novels, films or TV shows? From To Kill a Mockingbird to Erin Brockovich, from Perry Mason and L.A. Law to Boston Legal, lawyers are crusaders who fight for what’s right, often by protecting everyday folks against corporations, bureaucracies and other monolithic, faceless entities that harm or threaten them.

Ever notice how often insurance companies or their reps are the heroes of novels, films or TV shows? Never, right? They’re under the radar. They’re neither loved nor loathed. This doesn’t make them good guys. It just makes them non-targets.

As for lawyers, their prominence does make them targets, and many people take verbal shots. Lawyers, they believe, are untrustworthy and self-serving. Lawyers, they believe, are the problem, filing frivolous personal injury lawsuits which tie up the court system and cost taxpayers money.

But why are so many lawsuits filed? Not because lawyers created a problem, but because insurance companies did, and lawyers responded for their clients.

Instead of carping about lawsuits when you’ve never needed one, keep in mind why others need them so badly. Often it’s because their insurance company (“provider” is a misnomer) denies, delays or underpays coverage, in effect stealing money from them. And only with a lawyer’s help can people get what they’re due.

If every insurance company properly provided the coverage for which it took customers’ hard-earned money, then thousands of lawsuits never would be needed. But instead of protecting their customers, they protect themselves and their profit margins — customers’ rights be damned. And that cannot go unchallenged.

It is this systematic, institutionalized denial of insurance payments which spurs so much litigation. It’s not personal injury lawyers, who rightly fight for what their clients deserve. Besides, those same lawyers manage to settle the majority of insurance problem cases out of court, with no need for a trial.

What’s more, most personal injury lawyers work on a contingency basis, meaning their clients pay nothing if they don’t win their case. Only if a client wins do personal injury lawyers get paid, usually as a percent of the financial recovery they achieve for their client.

By contrast, insurance companies are paid up-front and in advance. In fact, they may collect your premium payments for many years without ever being asked to pay you a single cent. But when they are asked – when the time comes via harm from a car accident, diesel truck crash, hurricane property damage, defective medical device or other calamity — some insurance companies deny payment, delay paying or offer far less than what they owe.

Take Florida, a state often hit by hurricanes. In a recent two-year period, Floridians were slammed by four major storms, causing an estimated $36 billion in damage. Yet only $15 billion was paid on insurance premiums, and that’s not because most Floridians were uninsured. Rather, insurance companies resisted paying what they owed their customers.

Similarly, many residents of Houston, Harris County, Galveston and surrounding southeast Texas have faced daunting struggles to rebuild since Hurricane Ike’s onslaught in September of 2008. But many residents, as well as businesses, have been denied payments on the policies they purchased. This constitutes insurance fraud.

It hasn’t helped that so-called “tort reform” has made it harder for individuals to sue corporations for damages.

“About 1985, a secret meeting was held by insurance companies to figure out a way to reduce damage awards and to place propaganda in the minds of juries,” says Texas lawyer Jim “the Hammer” Adler. “There’s been a lockstep movement among big companies to influence judges, legislatures and the public mind to attack victims of injury and reduce their damage award.”

Ensuing “tort reform” laws have made it “more difficult for injury victims to win their cases,” Adler says. “The playing field is so far slanted in favor of the big corporations and big insurance companies, we have to fight twice as hard to get people the results they may have gotten five years ago.”

So who’s the hero here? Insurance companies who deny, delay and underpay? Or personal injury attorneys who fight to force payment of what is clearly and legally due?

The next time you have the impulse to blame lawyers, consider where the blame truly lies: with insurance companies that fight not for you, but for their own inflated profits.

If you’ve been affected by insurance company recalcitrance for hurricane property damage or other reasons, alert an insurance fraud lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates by calling 1-800-505-1414 or by  submitting the free case review form on this page. Then let an Adler lawyer fight the good fight for you.

“It’s a combative business,” Adler says. “When people’s lives are at stake, our job is to fight for them.”

Without such lawyers, you stand alone against insurance companies. With them, you stand a fighting chance of getting what’s right. And that should define heroism in anyone’s book.

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