BREAKING NEWS - JULY 12, 2022:
Report: California insurers are lowballing or denying wildfire coverage
UP IN SMOKE REPORT: JULY 2022
How Insurance Companies & The Insurance Commissioner Burned Wildfire Victims
“They told me to Swiffer my house” JULY 2022
California’s ‘insurer of last resort’ accused of wrongly denying wildfire claims
BURNING CALIFORNIANS: JULY 19,2022
Burning Californians: Insurers, policyholders and wildfires
“When they approved it, FAIR Plan lied”: JULY 22, 2022
Assessing Wildfire Risks Difficult As Coverage Woes Persist
Are you a California Fair Plan insured with a wildfire claim? Smoke damage claim? Did Fair Plan deny or lowball your wildfire claim?
Since 2015, Kerley Schaffer has pursued the California Fair Plan for using illegal policies and bad faith claims handling practice. The firm has worked closely with the California Department of Insurance in that regard. The Department acted as a friend of the court in support of Kerley Schaffer’s win in Fair Plan v. Garnes, in which the court held that the way Fair Plan paid claims was illegal.
For the past five years Kerley Schaffer has focused on Fair Plan’s refusal to cover the claims of wildfire victims. The firm has filed a number of individual lawsuits and a class action in Los Angeles on behalf of all Fair Plan policyholders. The Department of Insurance issued a report in June 2022 finding that agrees with all of Kerley Schaffer’s allegations in the class action. The Department held a formal hearing on July 13, 2022, to investigate the allegations.
Kerley Schaffer will continue to pursue litigation on behalf of Fair Plan customers until the insurer’s conduct no longer threatens the health and safety of Californians, and ensures that wildfire victims can fix and return to their homes.
Kerley Schaffer has spent years investigating Fair Plan and representing Fair Plan policyholders in lawsuits. Our firm has had success forcing Fair Plan to follow the law.
Here you’ll find some helpful rules for dealing with fastest growing (and one of the worst) insurers in the state.
CALIFORNIA FAIR PLAN IS NOT AN INSURANCE COMPANY.
Rule 1: Fair Plan may seem like an insurance company, but it’s not.
In the sixties, a bunch of super profitable companies started to pull out of property insurance markets in California—high fire risk areas, for example—because they were making slightly less money. The state said, “Look guys, you want to do business here, you better help get insurance to everyone who needs it.”
Fair Plan is what you might call a risk pool. It’s a giant pile of money—insurers like AAA, Farmers, State Farm and Nationwide contribute according to their market share—which is meant to protect people who those insurers cancel or won’t otherwise insure.
That you? Don’t worry, given these insurers desire to dump long-term customers in the pursuit of profits these days, Fair Plan now insures a lot of Californians.
CALIFORNIA FAIR PLAN CHEATS ITS CUSTOMERS BECAUSE . . . IT’S REALLY PROFITABLE.
Rule 2: All insurers cheat. Don’t take it personally. Fight back.
Insurers take premiums, invest those premiums, and make piles of money. When it comes time to pay claims, they mostly cheat everyone, and figure if they get sued a few times they still come out on top. Just look at their nice offices around the country, and the expensive ads they run during the Superbowl, and you can see carriers are fantastically profitable. Cheating customers is good business.
So, while Fair Plan is not strictly speaking an insurance company, it does sell property insurance. And as the company is run by a committee of highly paid executives from giant insurers, it won’t surprise you that they deny claims unfairly, lowball their estimates, and generally throw up hurdles when policyholders make claims to help their bottom lines.
CALIFORNIA FAIR PLAN HAS A FEW SPECIAL CHEATS OF ITS OWN
Rule 3: Never underestimate the creative ways an insurer might find to cheat.
Give California Fair Plan credit—it has been an innovator in finding ways to save money on the backs of its customers. The company routinely breaks the law. It won’t pay to clean houses damaged by fire debris from wildfires. It won’t even pay to inspect for smoke damage from wildfires because it figures homeowners can just mop up the soot and ash.
California Fair Plan employs an army of unqualified adjusters whose job appears to be not to help insureds, but to find ways to avoid paying claims. And when anyone complains, it hires its go-to lawyers to play offense against its own customers.
KERLEY SCHAFFER CAN HELP
Rule 4: See Rule 2 – fight back (but get help)
Kerley Schaffer beat Fair Plan when they cheated our elderly, African American client, paying her $75,000 on a $425,000 fire claim. Our firm has several ongoing suits against Fair Plan relating to wildfire claims, including a class action relating to smoke damage claims. Contact us for more information and help.