The “Hurricane Season from Hell” 1 is upon us. Hurricane Beryl, a Class 5 storm at peak energy and a rarity for July, impacted the Texas coast solely weeks in the past. As we inch nearer to the statistical peak of the Hurricane Season, Louisiana policyholders must be conscious that very important revisions affecting first-party claims towards their insurance coverage firms took impact in Louisiana on August 1, 2024.
Act No. 113, signed by Governor Landry on Might 21, 2024, added a seventeenth codified unfair claims settlement observe to Louisiana Revised Statute 22:1964(14). 2 The latest addition is a vital device for the policyholder looking for to ascertain the insurance coverage firm’s dangerous religion by demonstrating that the sector adjuster’s authentic estimate – primarily based upon his technical data, expertise, and examination of the property – fairly scoped and valued the harm. Nevertheless, subsequent revisions of that estimate by insurance coverage firm employees, who didn’t personally examine the broken property, had been to the detriment of the policyholder, leading to an under-scoped and under-valued harm estimate.
In Louisiana, it now constitutes an unfair and misleading observe for an insurance coverage firm:
Failing to make obtainable, upon the written request of an insured, the unique subject adjuster’s restore estimate, and if the estimate was revised, failing to establish the one that made the revisions.
The policyholder ought to interpret the phrase “establish the one that made the revisions” of the estimate within the broadest potential sense and may request info establishing the authority for the one that revised the estimate to carry out that revision.
That is one other weapon within the policyholder’s arsenal. In each declare, the policyholder ought to submit two separate written requests: The primary request ought to be for the unique subject adjuster’s restore estimate, to be offered inside thirty (30) days of the receipt of the written request, unredacted, unmodified, unedited, and unrevised. The second request ought to be for the identify, position or place, and phone info, for any revisions that had been made to the unique subject adjuster’s restore estimate.
As soon as obtained, the policyholder ought to scrutinize the unique estimate and the next revisions. The policyholder ought to query: Had been broken objects included within the authentic subject adjuster’s estimate however excluded from the official (revised) estimate? Had been the values of harm repairs within the authentic subject adjuster’s estimate lowered within the official (revised) estimate? Was the worth of the unique subject adjuster’s estimate larger however revised downward? Did the revisionist present a proof for the exclusion of the road objects within the estimate or the discount within the values of the repairs within the line objects? Relying on the disparity of the values within the authentic subject adjuster’s estimate, the policyholder might select to problem the revised estimate or the unique estimate by hiring a public adjuster or retaining discovered counsel to pursue an motion predicated on the insurance coverage firm’s dangerous religion.
1 https://www.weatherbell.com/hurricane-season-from-hell-first-look
2 R.S. 22:1964(14)(q), took impact on August 1, 2024.