The California FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort for Californians struggling to find homeowners insurance, might be better renamed the “California Unfair Plan.” While intended to be a safety net, recent investigations and a comprehensive operational assessment 1 paint a troubling picture of an institution plagued by significant inefficiencies, questionable management practices, and poor ……

Derek Chaiken and I visited a number of burned-out homes where our clients lived until the recent Los Angeles wildfires destroyed everything they owned. Seeing firsthand the devastating aftermath and hearing the deeply emotional stories from these homeowners is heartbreaking—but what’s even worse is witnessing how some insurance companies continue to compound their customers’ trauma ……

Proofs of loss and examinations under oath will be my speech topic at the Annual Meeting of the National Association of Public Insurance Adjusters (NAPIA) in June. My speech commemorates the same topic I gave 40 years ago at NAPIA ‘s Annual Meeting in Carmel, California. If you missed the one 40 years ago, you ……

Public adjusters, policyholders, and attorneys keep asking me about the recent California smoke damage case where the court held that the smoke damage was not covered under the policy. I wrote about that decision in California Wildfire Attorneys Consider Impact of New Smoke Caselaw. I noted: The key takeaway from the case is that the mere ……

Florida’s homeowners have been paying ever-increasing insurance premiums, but where has all that money been going? A secret state report, which regulators conveniently left unfinished and never shared with lawmakers, might have held the answer. That is, until an investigative journalist, Lawrence Mower, pried it loose from the state’s grasp, as discussed in Secret Report ……

Something big is happening this morning in Tallahassee. The Florida House Insurance and Banking Committee is holding a long-overdue investigative hearing beginning at 8:00 a.m., and for once, the spotlight is shining where it should—on the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) and its leadership. I previously noted this upcoming hearing in Florida Legislators to ……

In a recent decision that offers crucial guidance to policyholders and public adjusters about how to interpret commercial insurance contracts, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the policyholder, highlighting a key lesson about insurance policy interpretation: When insurance language is ambiguous, courts will interpret any ambiguity in favor of the policyholder. 1 At ……