The bill allows a policyholder who is unreasonably denied a claim or who experiences an unreasonable delay for payment of benefits under an uninsured or underinsured motorist policy to file a civil suit seeking three times the applicable coverage amount, plus pre- and postjudgment interest, attorney fees and litigation expenses.

The bill says no rate increase may be passed on to consumers as a result of compliance. Currently, policyholders are barred from suing insurance companies over claims practices.

Monday's vote comes on the last day of the current legislative session.

Sen. Nicholas Scutari, the bill's primary Senate sponsor, is hopeful that the Assembly will vote to approve the bill, and the governor will sign it, said Harris Laufer, his legislative director.

On Friday, the NJAJ website was asking the group's members to contact their Assembly representatives and ask them to vote yes on the bill. The website provided talking points for members to use in such calls, saying the bill "is an important consumer protection," it "is  needed because under current law there is no effective remedy for consumers whose claims have been unreasonably handled by their own insurer," and that "this is a system stacked in favor of insurance companies, not the honest consumer."

'Will Cost You Money'

Meanwhile, the insurance industry is fighting the bill.

One auto insurance company, Allstate New Jersey, sent emails to policyholders this week to discuss the proposed law, and to ask them to contact their legislators about it. Allstate said in the email that the bill, if enacted, would "increase mandatory uninsured/underinsured motorist auto insurance up to 19% per policy."

"Ask your lawmaker to vote no on hiking your insurance costs," the insurer added. "Let's work together to stop a law that will cost you money."

The Insurance Council of New Jersey, an industry group that opposes the bill, said in an email to legislators on Thursday that the proposed law carries "an extremely low, legal bar which makes human error and simple negligence by an auto insurer and its employees the standard for being subject to a bad faith cause of action, standards that are out of sync with most New Jersey statutes that don't mandate punitive damages for simple negligence or human error. Attorneys will use this low standard to pressure insurers to settle claims for artificially higher amounts to avoid costly litigation."

And the New Jersey Civil Justice Institute, which advocates for the business community on legal matters, said in a Dec. 13, 2021, memo to legislators that the Offer of Judgment Rule already provides a mechanism to address the issues the bill is designed to remedy. That group said that the New Jersey Supreme Court, in a 2015 decision, Wadeer v. New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance, said the OJR mechanism strikes the proper balance between deterring delay and unnecessary litigation and protecting carriers' ability to investigate questionable claims.