Tom Froman brings to his consulting practice a combination of common sense and extensive experience in the insurance industry.
Tom has sat as a designated 30(b)(6) Expert Witness numerous times and has helped successfully defend Auto-Owners Insurance Company and its subsidiary companies in bad faith litigation. He has extensive experience testifying as a fact witness as well. He understands insurance policy language and can explain it in plain English.
It is Tom’s ability to effectively communicate complicated insurance language together with his technical knowledge of the claim handling process that led to him being the “face of the company” in multiple cases, serving as a key company witness in multiple jury trials relating to high exposure insurance claims.
In 1985 after attending law school, Tom joined Auto-Owners as an attorney managing insurance claims litigation. He supervised high exposure bodily injury claims and directed outside attorneys on litigated matters. Tom’s focus, early on, was the handling of bad faith claims in Arizona.
In June of 1992, Tom was promoted to Senior Attorney. He continued to supervise litigation, evaluate high exposure files and also began to train new attorneys. Tom worked on multi-million dollar cases, and began handling surety bond claims involving payment bonds, completion of construction projects. Tom also began handling premium collection and insurance subrogation at this time.
In June of 2000, Tom was given the title Senior Attorney and Director of Legal Services. At this time his role expanded to include liaising with outside attorneys and the company on various issues relating to their representation of Auto-Owners. Tom also took on the Company’s Intellectual Property practice.
In August of 2004, Tom was elevated to Assistant Vice President of the Legal Division of Auto-Owners Insurance, where he served until his retirement September 1, 2018. As AVP of Legal, Tom dealt with agency issues, marketing & sales (including multiple sponsorship agreements including high profile collegiate and professional leagues and series), Intellectual Property, social media, excess verdict issues, construction defect clams and performance bond claims.
Tom also served as the primary handler for the company’s high exposure bad faith litigation involving exposures in excess of $1 million dollars.
During his career Tom has spoken publicly and presented at Surety Conferences and Construction Defect conferences and has also taught and supervised the presentation of multiple schools training Auto-Owners’ management and employees.
On September 1, 2018, Tom retired to pursue his dream of starting his own firm. Throughout a very successful career in-house, Tom never forgot his dream of starting his own law firm. As he neared “traditional” retirement age, Tom decided to use his vast knowledge and experience to benefit private clients and consult on matters relating to the insurance business. In furtherance of his dream of providing great service to a private client base, Tom thanks you for taking the time to review our page.
Upon retirement, Tom opened up Froman Law, PLLC. He is a practicing attorney, licensed in the State of Michigan.
Tom also offers consulting services to attorneys, individuals and corporate clients as both plaintiffs and defendants in the area of: Bad Faith Insurance Claims Handling, Insurance Claims Management, and Insurance Coverage matters.