An insurance policy, contractually, requires a number of things from the policyholder in order for the whole system to work. The relevant ones include:
- You have to be fully honest about everything you're doing and your whole situation (because otherwise you get adverse selection, e.g. if I say I just use my car for a sunday drive, but I'm actually running a taxi service)
- When filing a claim, you have to be proactive and helpful to the insurance company in evaluating the facts of the case. This is a big one. If you say "my house burned down, I have no idea why" and they want to come survey the site and you say "no, you can't do that, my pet parakeet got charred to a crisp in there and so the rubble is now sacred ground", they're unable to evaluate things like, say, did you burn it down yourself. Unless you're up to no good, there's usually no reason not to be helpful to your insurer, and reasonable objections are usually around time, place and manner, rather than whether you'll cooperate at all.
- Causing an actionable claim through intentional acts is excluded from coverage in just about every form of liability policy. Butch meant to run Marcellus Wallace over; he'd have no coverage from his insurer if Wallace sued for his injuries. Insurance doesn't work if it's covering harm that you intend to cause, rather than accidentally (or negligently) caused - again because of adverse selection.
- It's also your responsibility to put together all relevant information for a claim and submit it to your insurer within, usually, 60 days of the incident.
So, here we have Hernandez not filing a timely claim, intentionally causing the actionable claim (i.e., shooting the guy in the face), probably not fully disclosing all prior legal issues in his original application for insurance (which means they could probably void his policy retroactively), and on top of that, refusing to cooperate in the investigation of the claim. But he wants them to pay him, and Bradley. Sure, OK.
Hernandez will not get a red cent of coverage from Lexington; he'll owe Bradley every dollar he is found to owe, out of his own pocket.