A decade ago, it was questionable sinkhole damages that proliferated in Florida property insurance claims. More recently, “free roof” solicitations, roof claims and thousands of lawsuits have rattled the industry. Now comes cast iron drainpipes, common in homes built before …
When the Florida Legislature approved Senate Bill 76 last year, with its restrictions on homeowner solicitation by roofing contractors, insurers saw it as a major blow against runaway fraudulent and exaggerated roof claims. Then a contractor, Gale Force Roofing and …
The U.S. coal industry may be shrinking rapidly as the country shifts to renewable energy, but insurers’ and self-insured companies’ liabilities for black-lung occupational disease claims have ballooned – to an estimated $9 billion and perhaps more than $14 billion. …
Homeowners and public adjusters may now feel a little more emboldened to record an insurance adjuster’s inspection of a home, after a Florida appeals court ruled in favor of the practice last week – the third such ruling in as …
A group of contractors wasted little time in challenging the constitutionality of a law approved at the Florida Legislature’s special session last week, one the restoration companies argue singles them out and deprives them of attorney fees in assignment-of-benefits claims. …
By Wednesday morning, it was all over except for the speeches. The five-day special session on the insurance crisis turned into just three days, and without seeing adoption of a single significant modification to two bills that had been carefully …
Florida may have one of the most generous attorney-fee mechanisms in the country, sometimes resulting in plaintiff’s fees that are several times greater than the amount of damage awards. It’s enough to drive property insurers crazy – or toward the …
A Florida appeals court has put a fine point on the still-evolving “going and coming rule” in workers’ compensation law. The 1st District Court of Appeal found that a man injured on his way to a jobsite was not due …
Once a party relinquishes information considered privileged, it cannot then claim that other information about the same subject must remain sealed, a federal appeals court found in a medical malpractice and fraud case that has resulted in three separate rulings …
In another case involving the notorious Strems Law Firm, a Florida man has been charged with operating as an unlicensed claims adjuster and promising homeowners free roofs and kitchens to be paid for by an insurance carrier, state authorities said. …