On Property Insurance Claim Tips Blog

On February 21, 2018 the policyholder experienced a category 3 water loss in her Carnegie, Pittsburgh home from a broken stack pipe that runs from the second floor bathroom through the kitchen, which in return sent sewage throughout these areas of the home. Immediately upon noticing the damage the homeowner called a restoration company to mitigate the damage and called her insurance company to report the damage. Not knowing what other options she might have, she followed her insurance company’s instructions and sent their claim adjuster a few days later to inspect the loss.

I want to thank Florida Public Adjuster Michael Platts for penning this excellent commentary. 

By Michael W. Platts
We are rapidly approaching the end of the hurricane season. It has been an unprecedented nine years since a hurricane has struck the State of Florida. Nonetheless, many citizens are not seeing much if any reduction in their property insurance premiums and worse yet, the overall environment seems to be one in which the consumer continues to receive less and less coverage whether it is a result of unfavorable court rulings, legislative machinations which strengthen the hand of the insurance companies or more restrictive language within the insurance companies’ contracts (their policies).

Water damage to lower units is a common insurance claim we frequently see in condominium communities. Believe it or not, this can become a complicated claim depending on where the leak originated, the specific damage that was caused by the leak and if the cause of the damage is the result of someone’s negligence or just faulty plumbing. We came across a good overview of this situation in a Herald Tribune article and encourage you to read it. Regardless, make sure you quickly contact all parties if this type of insurance loss occurs and consider putting a public adjuster on your team to avoid claim denials and proper compensation.

Home and business owners aren’t the only ones feeling the impact from frozen pipe breaks. A recent NY Times article; A Severe Winter Breaks Budgets as Well as Pipes discusses the toll the deep freeze is taking on municipal infrastructure which may be dealing with pipes over 100 years old. We also know schools and other public facilities are experiencing frozen pipe damage.  When there is wide spread damage from weather events, we’ve seen these local governments bring in public adjusters to manage their claims since they are typically short on resources.

While looking for some information in my office library yesterday, I pulled a book from a shelf titled The Policyholder Advisor authored by Eugene R. Anderson, William G. Passannante, and Robert M. Horkovich. These three gentlemen, all attorneys, and at the time of publishing in 2002, shareholders at Anderson Kill & Olick P.C. now Anderson Kill P.C. one of the nation’s leading law firms for policyholders. The book jacket noted that the book is a collection of articles published in the firm’s newsletter, “The Policyholder Advisor.”

It was a little uncanny when I opened the book, and it opened to page 181 and the chapter title was “Insurance Coverage Available for Property Losses from The Blizzard of 96.” While no two storms are ever the same, there sure are a lot of similarities between the 1996 blizzard and the current polar vortex malaise of 2014; especially when it comes to insurance coverage issues and disputes with insurance carriers.

Yesterday, I was on a flight to sunny South Florida to meet with a client, and ran into a large loss adjuster who works for one of the major insurance carriers heading the same way. When you meet a fellow adjuster or colleagues who are in the business, usually the first question is to ask if you are busy. This seasoned adjuster side tells me the claims are rolling in from the areas that were affected in the big freeze caused by the “polar vortex” last week. It seems his company is so overwhelmed, that they have staffed call centers with independent adjusters just to handle the call volume.