Legal Question in Medical Malpractice in Virginia

Re: Medical Malpractice Reinstatement

Many profesional policies are "claims made" policies. Prior acts coverages as well as umbrellas, inter alia, are very important protections to maintain. People may come after you years afterwords. Talk to a professional insurance agent regarding these issues. Also, your employment contract may require the employer to maintain your coverage, so specific research on your case may be required. I wish you well. Afshin Pishevar, Esq.

Re: Medical Malpractice Reinstatement

Insurance companies are not required to insure anyone, unless we're talking about an SR-22 situation whereby certain insurance carriers agree with the state to provide mandatory coverage for a pool of high risk drivers.

Nevertheless, the proffered reason for denying you coverage appears specious. As long as you weren't cancelled before on any of your policies or had claims against you which the carrier was required to settle, you should be able to obtain insurance. You should make crystal clear in your application the reason why you were not carrying insurance for a particular time period, ie., there was a hiatus in your practice and you therefore saw no need to maintain coverage since there was no possible way any malpractice claims could be asserted against you during this particular time frame.

Some of your colleagues may also be able to offer suggestions as to how best to reactivate coverage in a situation such as yours.