Ask most claims teams what puts them at risk of a bad faith suit, and you'll hear the same answer: delay. Every day a file sits open is a day someone can claim stalling. So the instinct is to move fast, resolve quickly, and treat any friction with the policyholder as a liability.
A Delaware Superior Court ruling suggests that instinct is incomplete and can lead to worse decisions than the ones you're trying to avoid.
Rethinking Conventional Wisdom
The standard view is that statutory clocks are unforgiving. Once a claim is filed, the insurer must pay or explain within a fixed window. A request for more documents, especially one that's hard to fulfill quickly, looks like a pretext. If a plaintiff's lawyer can paint it as a constructive denial, you're facing bad faith exposure and punitive damages.
Many handlers and reviewers carry this fear into every file. The result is defensive behavior: rushing decisions before the investigation is complete or avoiding documentation requests altogether because they "look bad" in a later narrative.
Why This View Falls Short
Fear of the constructive-denial argument can make you skip the very step the statute expects you to take. Investigation is not the opposite of good faith claims handling; it's the substance of it.
Consider a recent Delaware PIP case. A policyholder filed a lost wages claim on May 22, 2025. On June 9, day 18 of the 30-day window under 21 Del. C. Section 2118B, the adjuster sent a letter asking for tax documentation, a termination letter, and a chiropractic medical examination. The letter said the claim was pending. The next day, the policyholder sued, with her counsel writing that "given your conduct up to this point, it is clear that you do not intend to pay the claim as required by Delaware law."
The court rejected that framing. The letter "lacked any degree of unequivocality necessary to constitute a denial." No denial meant no breach. Without a breach, the bad faith and punitive damages theories had nothing underneath them.
The policyholder's best argument was practical: asking for documents that couldn't realistically be produced inside the window is a denial in all but name. The court said that "does not convert the Letter into a denial." The difficulty of compliance didn't change the legal character of the request.
Key Takeaways for Your Files
Three features of this case matter for how you build your own files.
The letter was a request, not a verdict. It listed specific items and labeled the claim pending. Nothing in it closed the door. A denial has to say no, clearly. Ambiguity cuts against the party claiming a denial occurred.
The timing worked in the insurer's favor. The request went out on day 18, with the window still open. The suit followed the next day, before the insurer had run out its time. A plaintiff who sues inside the investigation window is asserting a breach that hasn't happened yet.
The outcome matched the posture. Integon paid the lost wages on November 21, 2025, while the suit was pending. That payment is consistent with a claim that was under review, not one that had been rejected. A denial that later gets paid is a strange kind of denial.
There's a caution here too. The adjuster's deposition surfaced suspicions about a falsified disability note and the policyholder continuing to work after the accident, and the claim went to special investigations the day the suit arrived. Those facts supported the insurer's need for documentation. They also remind you that your file notes will be read by someone adversarial.
Practical Steps for Your Team
Stop treating the documentation request as a risk to minimize. Treat it as a tool to use precisely.
Write requests that can't be read as refusals. State that the claim is under review. List exactly what you need and why. Avoid language that sounds like a conclusion, such as "unable to process" or "does not appear to qualify," unless you mean it as a denial.
Send requests early in the window. Day 18 left room to follow up. A request on day 29 invites the stalling argument. Early requests also give the policyholder time to respond, which strengthens your record.
Separate investigation from decision in your communications. If you reach a decision, say so plainly and cite the basis. If you haven't, say that plainly too. Mixed signals create the ambiguity a plaintiff exploits.
Document the rationale at the time. Contemporaneous notes explaining why each item is needed will matter more than any after-the-fact justification.
Calendar the statutory deadline separately from your internal targets. Know the outer limit and work back from it. Don't let an internal service goal convince you that day 18 is too late to ask for something.
When Conventional Wisdom Holds True
None of this licenses open-ended document demands. The fear of pretextual delay is legitimate, and this ruling doesn't erase it.
If your requests are boilerplate, duplicative, or unconnected to the claim, a court may read them differently. A string of requests that keeps moving the goalposts, or a request designed to be impossible to meet, could look like stalling in a way a single targeted letter does not. The Delaware court addressed one letter with three specific asks tied to documented concerns. It didn't bless every request in every circumstance.
Also remember that the window still closes. Once your 30 days are up, you either pay or explain. A claim left in "pending" limbo past the deadline is a different problem, and this ruling won't help you.
And this is one trial court's reading of one statute on one set of facts. Treat it as persuasive framing for your own communications, not a guarantee. Check how your jurisdiction defines denial and what its statute requires of you inside the window.
The practical takeaway is simple. Ask for what you need, say clearly that you're still deciding, and don't let the fear of a lawsuit talk you out of doing the investigation the statute contemplates.
