Florida Chapter 2023-203: Ensuring Building Safety in the Wake of Tragedies - It often takes a crisis for society and government to react. Whether it be seat belts, smoking, or building safety, unfortunately, catastrophe...more
Insurers in South Carolina may now depreciate both labor costs and material costs when determining the “actual cash value” (ACV) owed to policyholders for property damage....more
Most first party property coverage policies contain an appraisal provision that allows either the insured or the insurer to make a written demand for appraisal when the parties agree that covered property was damaged by a...more
Those familiar with first party insurance policies have undoubtedly encountered a recurring issue with the interpretation of appraisal provisions – what does it mean to disagree on the amount of loss? ...more
Most property insurance policies condition the payment of replacement cost value (RCV) on the property first being replaced or repaired, and courts typically enforce that requirement. ...more
Insurance policies are designed to indemnify an insured by putting the policyholder in the same position he or she would have been in had no loss occurred. In the context of property insurance policies, damaged property is...more
Property insurance policies typically require that the insured repair or replace damaged property before recovering on a replacement cost value (RCV) basis. ...more
The 2014 Florida Existing Building Code (the “Code”) contains what is conventionally called the “25 percent rule” (the “Rule”). The Rule applies to roof repair of any commercial or residential building. In a nutshell, the...more
Oftentimes, during the course of a subrogation claim, third-party liability adjusters will refuse to pay the full amount of the “Repair Cost Value” (“RCV”) of the damages demanded, and contend that they only owe “Actual Cash...more
There have been two recent federal district court decisions in the widespread class action litigation involving the application of depreciation to the labor cost component of replacement cost value on property insurance...more
On Monday, the California Supreme Court revived a 2011 insurance regulation designed to protect homeowners from underinsurance because of the insurance company’s use of potentially misleading estimates for home replacement...more
Nearly two years ago, a California appellate court invalidated a rule promulgated by the state’s Insurance Commissioner, on the ground that the regulator lacks authority to prohibit “deceptive acts or practices” which are not...more
In 2011, the California Insurance Commissioner promulgated a regulation governing replacement cost estimates for homeowners insurance (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 10, §2695.183 [the Regulation]). After the trial court and...more
In December, we published a post about a Minnesota Supreme Court case that held that under a replacement cost policy, the phrase “comparable material and quality” meant that all of the siding on 20 buildings had to be...more
The April 8, 2015 decision of the California Court of Appeals in Ass’n. of Cal. Insurance Companies v. Jones, 2015 WL 1569669, 2015 Cal. App. LEXIS 298 (Cal.Ct.App., Apr. 8, 2015) held that the state’s Insurance Commissioner...more
When an insured suffers a property loss, the insurance policy defines the parameters of recovery. Typically, a property insurance policy’s default valuation provision for a property loss is the actual cash value of the...more
Matching issues are frequently problematic when storms damage only portions of an insured structure’s exterior and it proves impossible to replace the damaged sections with material that is an exact match for the rest of the...more
The onslaught of new hail damage lawsuits does not appear to be ending anytime soon. The docket of every county in which a significant hail event has occurred in recent years sees numerous new hail damage lawsuit filings...more