Homeowner's Insurance Claims

Your home is the biggest thing most of us own, and the policy on it is a promise that one bad day will not turn into a bad decade.

What Your Policy Should Do

Catastrophic losses arrive without warning: a monsoon storm with heavy rain and strong winds that tears into the roof, a water line that breaks while you are at work or away and floods the house, a fire, a theft or burglary.

What you bought is straightforward. Your homeowner's policy should repair your home to the condition it was in before the loss, repair or replace the personal property that was damaged or taken, and, if the house is not liveable, pay for somewhere else for you to stay while the work is done.

When the Insurer Does Not Hold Up Its End

Arizona law requires an insurance company to look out for its insured's interests and not put its own above them. That does not always happen. Claims are a cost, and the less a company pays on them the better its year looks.

So the file goes quiet for weeks. Or the company responds without acknowledging the full damage: the repairs it will fund are not enough, or the damaged and lost personal property is never paid for. Or the claim, or a large part of it, is denied outright even though you have read the policy and spoken to your agent and there is plainly coverage.

Suffering the loss is hard enough. Having your own insurer fail to live up to its end of the bargain adds insult to injury, and it has a legal name: bad faith, a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing recognised by Arizona law.

Bad-Faith Conduct We See

• Failing to communicate with you in any timely way.
• Failing to process the claim promptly, or dragging it out unreasonably.
• Failing to conduct an adequate or reasonable investigation of the loss.
• Failing to assess your damages reasonably, better known as low-balling.
• Placing the insurance company's interests above yours.
• Forcing you through hoops to get benefits you have paid for: repeated requests for supporting documentation, repeated recorded statements or examinations under oath, or making you demand appraisal because the company will not pay what it owes.

What You Can Recover

If your insurer has treated you this way, you may be owed money damages above and beyond the policy benefits themselves, to compensate you for the stress, frustration, aggravation, anxiety and emotional distress its conduct caused. Out-of-pocket costs and interest can form part of a recovery too. Our insurance bad faith page explains how those cases work.

How We Help

Douglas Dieker has the experience to make sure you are paid everything you are owed, and he has obtained many high-value settlements for clients going through exactly what you are going through. Every case is a little different, so we analyse each one ourselves and build a strategy for that client and that file.

The team treats each case as if it were their own family's, and we do what we can to take the frustration off your plate. The first consultation is free and we work on contingency: if we do not recover anything for you, you do not owe us a fee.