{"id":54855,"date":"2022-09-14T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T21:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=54855"},"modified":"2022-09-14T17:35:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T21:35:18","slug":"lawsuit-insurance-company-denied-legitimate-hurricane-irma-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/09\/lawsuit-insurance-company-denied-legitimate-hurricane-irma-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit: Insurance Company denied legitimate Hurricane Irma claims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Five years ago, Hurricane Irma ravaged parts of the Tampa Bay<\/a> area. Now a lawsuit alleges, in the aftermath of the storm, one insurer denied legitimate claims, leaving Florida homeowners high and dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The lawsuit claims the property insurer, United Property & Casualty Insurance Company (United P&C), was engaged in racketeering. United P&C is one of the largest property insurance companies in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the civil lawsuit that was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, United P&C allegedly underpaid or flat-out denied at least 200 legitimate claims in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. General contractor, SFR services, brought the lawsuit against United P&C in January, accusing the insurer of committing multiple acts of fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing a former prosecutor, my job is to collect evidence,\u201d homeowners insurance attorney John Tolley, Esq. said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolley says he represents impacted homeowners, and evidence he collected was used to bring the lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUPC was telling their adjusters, no matter what, they were going to deny all of the claims, regardless of it was a valid claim or not,\u201d said Tolley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat are you basing this on?\u201d He responded, \u201cWe\u2019ve collected emails, text messages, and voicemails.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolley calls one text message the smoking gun in the case. It was allegedly sent by a co-conspirator of the insurance company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the text, an adjusting firm manager appears to instruct field crews to say they \u201ccannot determine cause of loss\u201d on late-reported Irma claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want us to put this in an email,\u201d the alleged text read, in part. The text message, which is mentioned in the lawsuit, goes on to state, \u201cthey no longer want you to turn in any estimate whatsoever for any damages they are going to be doing denials on all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a statement, an attorney for United P&C says the lawsuit lacks merit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUPC has no comment at this time beyond the fact that it denies the allegations,\u201d attorney Michael Monteverde, Esq. said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, United P&C asked regulators last month to approve its plan to withdraw from multiple states<\/a>, including Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow they\u2019ve completely bailed out of Florida claiming reinsurance is the issue,\u201d said Tolley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolley is calling out Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s created all these taskforces to go after roofers and contractors but at no time do they ever go after insurance companies,\u201d said Tolley. \u201cThey get to walk away from the state of Florida \u2013 no harm, no foul.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patronis\u2019 office responded in a statement, saying the CFO goes after fraud wherever he finds it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProtecting Florida policyholders is our number one goal. Whether dealing with roofers, contractors, or insurers, the Division of Investigative & Forensic Services will go after bad actors if there is a credible complaint to act on. The Department takes fraud seriously and encourages the public to contact the Insurance Fraud Tip Line at 1-800-378-0445.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, let\u2019s not forget that insurance companies have been exiting Florida\u2019s market due to the challenging legal environment. For example, Mr. Tolley alone has served lawsuits on insurance companies 135 times over the last two years, and those costs are passed down to policyholders through premium hikes. The CFO believes that, while there are good actors, there are also bad insurers, bad contractors, and bad attorneys who make a mess of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DEVIN GALETTA, COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR United P&C has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five years ago, Hurricane Irma ravaged parts of the Tampa Bay area. Now a lawsuit alleges, in the aftermath of the storm, one insurer denied legitimate claims, leaving Florida homeowners high and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":54856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1628],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54857,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54855\/revisions\/54857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}