Marr Law Firm is well recognized for its aggressive representation of policyholders and consumers in State and National litigation.
Many of the recent wildfire victims in California are being surprised to learn they were underinsured. The most often and obvious question asked by policyholders is: How did I become underinsured? In order to answer that question, one needs only to ask their insurance carrier how they actually determined the estimated replacement cost of their home. For if done responsibly and correctly, everyone should be fully insured to the replacement cost value of their home. Unfortunately, however, more and more insurance companies are choosing to cut corners and merely assume information about your home rather than expend the time, effort and expense of actually inspecting it. By using presumed, instead of actual, information about the particular features of your home, insurance companies are over and under insuring homes. Ask your insurance carrier to provide you with a copy of their inspection of your dwelling as part of the application and underwriting process, along with the estimated replacement cost valuation of your dwelling. Both will yield key evidence as to whether or not the value of your home was simply a “poor guess” by the insurance company, which now as a result of the recent Camp Fire in the north and the Woolsey Fire in the south, has left you unable to replace your home to its pre-loss condition. Your insurance carrier has an obligation to fairly and reasonably calculate the value of your home and advise you of its replacement costs. Failing to actually and/or thoroughly inspect your home, and using flawed methodology consisting of assumptive data and fill-in-the-blank software, hardly satisfies said obligation. We have successfully exposed and prosecuted countless actions against insurance companies for negligently underinsuring policyholders’ homes.