The answer is yes, but the more useful answer requires understanding what kind of lawsuit you would actually be filing, what you need to prove, and what the realistic outcomes look like depending on whether you are making a claim against someone else’s insurance company or your own. Those two situations are governed by different legal theories, produce different remedies, and require different showings of proof. Treating them as the same question produces the wrong analysis for at least one of them, so they deserve to be addressed separately.

When the insurance company that is delaying your payment is the other driver’s carrier, you are dealing with a third-party claim. The insurer owes you money because their insured caused your injuries. They have reached a settlement with you, accepted your signed release, and failed to pay within a reasonable time. Your legal options in that situation begin with a breach of contract claim against the insurer for failing to perform their payment obligation under the settlement agreement. A settlement is a contract. When one party performs, meaning you signed the release and gave up your claims, and the other party does not perform, meaning the insurer has not issued payment, the non-performing party is in breach. A breach of contract claim allows you to recover the settlement amount you are owed, and in some circumstances interest on that amount from the date payment was due.

Missouri does not impose a specific statutory interest rate on delayed settlement payments through a dedicated prompt payment statute of the kind some other states have enacted. What Missouri does have is a broader framework under Missouri Revised Statutes Section 375.1007, which identifies specific acts by insurers that constitute unfair claims settlement practices. Failing to effectuate prompt, fair, and equitable settlements of claims in which liability has become reasonably clear is one of those identified practices. An insurer who sits on a signed release and refuses to issue payment without legitimate cause is engaging in conduct that falls within that framework, and the Missouri Department of Insurance has authority to act on complaints filed under it. Filing a complaint with the Department of Insurance is not the same as filing a lawsuit, but it creates a regulatory record, sometimes produces faster payment, and costs nothing to pursue in parallel with other options.

Bad faith is the legal theory that carries the most financial consequence for an insurer and therefore the one they are most motivated to avoid. In the third-party context, bad faith delay in paying a settled claim is more difficult to establish than bad faith in the broader sense because the settlement itself has already resolved the underlying coverage dispute. What you are left with is a payment delay claim, and whether that rises to bad faith depends on the duration of the delay, the insurer’s explanation for it, and whether the delay caused you damages beyond the mere inconvenience of waiting. A two-week delay with a plausible administrative explanation is not bad faith. A four-month delay with no explanation, following repeated unanswered demands for payment, is considerably closer to territory where a bad faith claim has merit.

The situation looks meaningfully different when the insurance company delaying payment is your own. First-party bad faith, meaning a claim that your own insurer handled your claim in bad faith, is one of the most significant legal theories available to injured people in Missouri and is worth understanding carefully. If you are making a claim under your own uninsured motorist coverage or underinsured motorist coverage and your insurer is improperly delaying or refusing to pay what you are owed, you are not just a third party trying to collect from someone else’s carrier. You are a policyholder to whom your insurer owes a direct contractual duty of good faith and fair dealing. That duty is enforceable in Missouri through a bad faith cause of action, and the consequences of a successful bad faith claim against your own insurer are substantially more significant than the consequences of a breach of contract claim against a third-party carrier.

Missouri recognizes the tort of bad faith refusal to pay an insurance claim, and when a first-party insurer acts in bad faith, the damages available to the policyholder can include the full amount of the withheld payment plus consequential damages caused by the delay, attorneys fees in some circumstances, and in cases of egregious conduct, punitive damages. Punitive damages in Missouri insurance bad faith cases are not theoretical. Missouri courts have upheld significant punitive damage awards against insurers whose conduct demonstrated a reckless disregard for their policyholders’ rights. The threat of punitive exposure is one of the primary mechanisms that keeps first-party bad faith from being routine, because the potential downside for the insurer of losing a bad faith case substantially exceeds the potential gain from withholding payment.

Here is the specific insight that most people asking this question have never encountered. The standard for bad faith in Missouri is not whether the insurer was wrong about the value of your claim or the timing of payment. It is whether the insurer had a reasonable basis for the position they took. An insurer who reaches a conclusion that a court ultimately disagrees with is not automatically a bad faith defendant. An insurer who takes a position they knew was unreasonable, who ignored their own adjuster’s evaluation, who deliberately created delay to pressure a claimant into accepting less, or who failed to investigate a claim with the thoroughness required by the circumstances is in qualitatively different territory. The bad faith standard asks about the insurer’s state of mind, not just their outcome, which is why bad faith claims require more than showing the insurer was wrong. They require showing the insurer acted unreasonably in a way that was not simply mistaken.

The evidentiary demands of a bad faith claim are also worth naming directly. Bad faith claims often turn on internal insurer documents, claims handling notes, reserve records, adjuster communications, and supervisory directives that are not available to a claimant without formal discovery. What looks like straightforward delay from the outside frequently has an internal story that either supports or undermines the bad faith theory, and that story only becomes accessible once litigation is filed and discovery begins. This is one of the reasons that bad faith claims are almost always litigated rather than resolved through pre-suit negotiation. The evidence necessary to prove the claim is inside the insurer’s own files, and getting to those files requires a lawsuit.

There is also a procedural consideration in Missouri that matters significantly to how first-party bad faith claims are structured. Missouri courts have held that a bad faith claim against your own insurer is generally ripe only after a judgment has established the insurer’s liability and the amount owed. This means that in a first-party UM or UIM context, you typically need to obtain a judgment or arbitration award establishing that your insurer owed you the disputed amount before a separate bad faith action will be entertained. The bad faith claim rides on top of the underlying coverage claim, not alongside it as a simultaneous alternative. Understanding that procedural sequence matters because it affects the timeline and structure of any litigation strategy aimed at holding your insurer accountable for how they handled your claim.

Regulatory complaints deserve mention as a parallel track that operates independently of litigation and sometimes produces results faster. Filing a complaint with the Missouri Department of Insurance against an insurer who is improperly delaying payment is not a substitute for legal action, but it is not nothing either. Insurers who receive regulatory complaints are required to respond to the Department’s inquiry, which creates visibility into the handling of your claim that did not exist before. Some delays that persisted through repeated phone calls resolve quickly once a regulator is asking questions. The Department cannot award you damages or order the insurer to pay you, but regulatory scrutiny changes the insurer’s calculation about the cost of continued delay in a way that private phone calls do not.

The practical threshold question for anyone considering whether to pursue legal action over a delayed settlement payment is whether the delay has caused you actual damages beyond the money you are owed. If the insurer is simply slow and you are waiting for a check that will eventually arrive, your damages are the settlement amount, and the cost and effort of litigation may not be proportionate to recovering what you were already going to receive anyway. If the delay has caused you to miss mortgage payments, lose your home, default on medical bills that have gone to collection, or suffer other concrete financial harm that flows directly from the insurer’s failure to pay when they should have, the calculus changes. Consequential damages caused by the delay add substance to a claim that might otherwise be a pure breach of contract action for the face amount of a settlement the insurer was eventually going to pay.

The insurer is counting on the calculation running the other way. They know that most claimants will not litigate over a settlement payment delay because the cost and uncertainty of litigation over the timing of payment, rather than the payment itself, does not feel worth it. That calculation is correct often enough to make delay a rational strategy for insurers who have no particular incentive to move quickly. What changes that calculation is an attorney who understands the bad faith framework, who is willing to demand the insurer’s claims file through discovery, and who can credibly threaten the kind of exposure that makes continued delay more expensive than the cost of simply writing the check. The insurer is not afraid of your frustration. They are afraid of their own internal documents being read by a jury.

This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this content. Laws governing insurance bad faith, unfair claims practices, and prompt payment obligations vary significantly by state, and the procedural requirements for bringing these claims differ depending on the type of coverage and the nature of the dispute. If you believe an insurance company has improperly delayed or refused to pay a settlement, consult with a licensed personal injury attorney in your jurisdiction about the specific options available to you.