• 08
  • November
    2011

Hello. My name is Ted Corless. I have spent the last decade representing parties when insurance claims go sideways. Remember insurance? It's an agreement between insurance companies and their insureds to protect my client's assets. Your company got paid for this policy. And, for almost all of my clients, you weren't their first choice. In all likelihood, you were their last.

My clients pay you a premium, and you provide them insurance. We all also know that you are a public company. Yeah, we all get it that you have a direct pipeline to the legislators who recently decided to gut much of the insurance you provide. We aren't very happy about that, but unlike Citizens, we did not have a bunch of lobbyists running around our State Capital whispering in people's ears. Most of my clients are just common homeowners, who never wanted to do business with you and certainly never wanted to file a claim.

But you know that, right?

Or, its is that you have been directed to literally deny any and all claims you can, without concern regarding whether it impacted people's lives. Remember, people live in these homes, the ones where you claim all of the "bogus" claims were filed. I know, maybe not, but you all act like every single claim you get is bogus. You all pretend that you aren't really responsible, because you are doing the best you can, be it for a water loss, a sinkhole claim, or a fire.

Are you doing the best you can for your insureds, like other insurance companies are doing?

I'd like to hear one story where a Citizens claim adjuster went the extra mile. The "desk adjusters," as you call them, sit at their desks and don't go to the homes where people are forced to move out because of the conditions at the house. We have a client in Ocala, where a sinkhole literally ate their car, and the claim adjuster told them the 36-foot wide hole in the ground "isn't a sinkhole." She said her engineer said there wasn't a problem, although the report she was hiding from the insured said otherwise. She even joked that "maybe they should just pick up their house and move it." I suggested to her that absent the attempts to repair the sinkhole before the hole opened the home would have collapsed and likely killed one of the small children living in the home. Based upon that, her attempt at humor was in bad taste. I knew her from her prior employer, and that person never would have made a joke like that. This isn't a game, I told her.

But, you know that, right?

I won't publish her name (but boy to I want to), but she knows who she is. I also won't mention the multitude of people who have valid claims who are treated rudely for just making a claim. If you are a Citizens claim adjuster, I'd ask you to consider the possibility that you have lost perspective. Maybe today, when you get that new claim, you won't get snarky on the phone with them when they tell you they don't have any water to do laundry because their house is so badly damaged. This next call, this next claim, you want to do a good job, which is not to "save the money of the people of Florida," as so many of your lawyers like to brag. If I hear one more lawyer tell me that Citizens is "special" because they have a duty to public not to pay "bogus" claims, I am going to wretch.

Let's make a deal: let each of my client's claims stand for itself. In the meantime, let's also agree you don't know whether it's a bogus claim until you actually gather the facts. If you are responsible to the people of the State of Florida, I say it starts when the claim is filed, not just when the lawyer refuses to pay the claim.

If you have a story about a Citizens adjuster who went the extra mile, we'd like to hear about it, so we can tell the people of Florida that their public insurance company cares about them.