When a disaster strikes such as a fire, hurricane, flood, whether the disaster is natural or man-made, the insurance company will seldom have your best interest at heart in paying your claim. Insurance adjusters will seek to get your statement and signature immediately following a property damage claim so you’ll need to be aware of their tactics to deny your claim in advance.
Insurance adjusters are sure to do several things to limit or eliminate your property insurance claim. First of all, understand that insurance adjusters work for the insurance company …. not for you! When you file a claim against the insurance company, you immediately become their adversary and they will do everything they can to reduce or eliminate entirely the amount of money that they must legally pay you. The insurance adjuster may seem friendly and nice, but they use familiarity, friendliness and folksiness as tactics to get you to do and say things that they record and can use against you if they deny your claim and you choose to sue them. You should never talk with an insurance adjuster. Instead, simply give them our card and tell them to talk to your lawyer, The Maus Law Firm, if they have any questions.
Another tactic is that the insurance adjuster will act quickly to try to catch you off guard before you’ve had time to think about your damages and certainly before you’ve had time to hire a lawyer. An insurance adjuster may even go as far as telling you that you don’t need a lawyer and that hiring one will only delay your settlement.
The insurance adjuster will try to get you to sign papers that they deem are routine and necessary for them to proceed. And they may be, but they also may contain incriminating statements that limit their liability. They may tell you that if you don’t sign the papers they can not proceed with your claim. If you, being the trusting and honest person that you are, quickly and superfluously review the documents and then sign them, you could miss clauses, subtleties and fine print that will severely reduce or eliminate entirely the settlement that they must legally pay you. The papers you’ll be asked to sign were drafted by lawyers. It’s only smart that you hire a lawyer to interpret them.
These are just a few of the many reasons why if you have suffered property damage to a structure that you own that is insured, you’ll need to make an immediate call to the Maus Law Firm. We have dealt successfully with hundreds of cases pertaining to property insurance claims. We have seen it all and we know all their tricks. Keep our number handy and call us when property damage strikes.