As Hurricane Ian fades into the Atlantic and insurance professionals are left to sort out the devastation in its wake, another storm is rising, and it is not the type which causes damage to homes and vehicles. It causes damage of a much more insidious nature. Following a storm or other natural disaster, canvassers hired…
Flooding is the number one natural peril in the U.S.—even more devastating than wildfires and storms. Since 2011, there have been over $100 billion in insured losses from flood events around the globe. Over the past three decades, Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C. has been on the forefront of subrogating catastrophic flooding and other natural…
New Law Mandates That Insurance Companies Report All Dog Bite Claims To The State. It’s a great trivia question. Which state has the most dog bite claims? The answer probably won’t surprise you—California, with 2,103 insurance claims in 2020, followed by Florida, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. What may surprise you, however, is…
New York Botanical Garden v. Allied World Assurance Co. (U.S.) Inc., 16127, 2022 WL 2124845 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dept. June 14, 2022). Cajun Conti, LLC v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s, London, 2021-CA-0343, 2022 WL 2154863 (La. App. 4th Cir. June 15, 2022). There is a hole in the dam. Prior to June 14, every one…
Each year, water damage and freezing pipes cost insurers $15-$20 billion and result in claims from approximately 1 in 50 insured homes. While many cases of water damage are caused by a lack of maintenance or normal wear and tear, in the winter months, claims related to water damage and freezing pipes are extremely common.…
Most subrogation claims are small. If your subrogation law firm or recovery vendor does not handle small claims, you shouldn’t use them. Using HO-3 homeowner’s policy claims as an example, the average property damage claim payment was $8,787 according to data from the Insurance Research Council. In 2020, the average private passenger auto collision claim…
HB 2064 Takes Effect June 9, 2022. For many years a landlord’s property insurer’s ability to subrogate for property damage against a negligent tenant was governed by a handful of case decisions. A landlord was frequently presumed to carry insurance for the tenant’s benefit, making the tenant an implied co-insured and, therefore, immune from a…
Ten Questions You Should Ask Your Subrogation Firms and Vendors What do you really know about the strengths and weaknesses of the cybersecurity measures taken by the subrogation counsel and recovery vendors you engage to assist with subrogation recoveries? In April 2021, Yahoo entered into a $117.5 million settlement in a proposed class action suit…
Insurance companies, third-party adjusting companies, and subrogation vendors are increasingly undertaking subrogation investigation at an early stage of a claim’s life. Understanding that early recognition and action on third-party recovery potential is often won or lost in the first few days following an insurance claim or loss, companies are learning to obtain and retain key…
At 10:30 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, December 30, 2021, two separate wildfires broke out in Boulder County, Colorado near the towns of Superior and Lafayette. One of them—known as the Middle Fork Fire—was contained later that day and caused no property damage. Unfortunately, the other—known as the Marshall Fire—damaged over 6,000 acres, resulted…