Practical Tips
A plain-language series on proving insurance expert bias — the standard the courts apply, the factors that establish it, and why it is the fight that matters.
These Practical Tips translate the framework behind this site into working guidance for insureds and their attorneys. They build in order: first why the bias analysis matters, then the standard and the four Demer factors that establish an inference of bias, one at a time.
The ideas and the seminal authority are free here. The implementing corpus — the lesser-known cases that apply the framework, the curated synthesis of them, and the operational tools (discovery sets, disclosure demands, motion language) — is the paid product, available to subscribers of Expert Bias Report: Insurance Claims and through the bias-evaluation service.
Practical Tip · Start Here
Why attacking the expert’s thoroughness wins the wrong battle. An insurer that loses a thoroughness fight pays only the benefit it already owed; only proving bias defeats the genuine-dispute shield and reaches the remedies that matter — Brandt fees, tort damages, and punitive damages.
Practical Tip · The Demer Factors · Factor One
Financial-dependence bias in plain language — the two Demer metrics, the magnitude of the expert’s compensation and the frequency of retention, that raise an inference of bias and shift the burden to the insurer to show the expert was neutral.
More in the series: the remaining Demer factors — the expert’s patterns across other insureds’ claim files, the reliability of the expert’s methods, and the insurer’s reasonable measures to safeguard impartiality — are in preparation.