Carl Bober and Ashley Arias (Hollywood, FL) (Property) obtained a Defense Verdict on behalf of their client, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, in a first-party property breach of contract action brought by Plaintiff against her homeowners insurance carrier in a jury trial that took place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Plaintiff brought a breach of contract suit regarding a residential property insurance claim to her home related to Hurricane Irma. Plaintiff reported a claim for damage to her roof and water damage to the interior of her home, which Citizens had denied due to the late reporting of the loss having prejudiced their investigation of the claim. The Plaintiff sought payment for the complete replacement of her roof and repairs to ceilings and walls in several rooms at the property. Plaintiff’s expert testified at trial that 38% of the roof had been damaged due to the winds from Hurricane Irma and that as a result, it had to be replaced per the Florida Building Code. For the defense, an expert engineer testified that while he found no wind damage to the roof that he could definitively correlate to Hurricane Irma, due to the late notice related to the passage of time between the storm and the report of the Plaintiff’s claim, as well as intervening undocumented repairs, it was not possible for him to rule out that Hurricane Irma may have damaged the Plaintiff’s property.
In less than 25 minutes, the jury found in favor of Citizens finding that Plaintiff failed to meet her burden to show that her property sustained a direct physical loss at the time of Hurricane Irma during the policy period. Defendant’s motion seeking the recovery of Citizens’ attorney’s fees and costs is pending.
Plaintiff’s Demand at Trial: $76,011.51, plus claimed attorney’s fees and costs in excess of $100K+.