A monster storm system marched eastward, bringing tornadoes, flash floods, and freezing rain to North Texas the last weekend of December 2015. The National Weather Service confirmed three tornadoes were part of the storms that ripped through the Dallas area on Saturday, killing 11 people and damaging hundreds of buildings.
Tornadoes can spread destruction over a large area, impacting countless businesses and communities. Damage often results from either a direct hit from a funnel cloud or any accompanying windstorm, rain, and hail, impacting commercial and industrial businesses of all sizes, apartment complexes. Properties near but outside of the primary tornado track often suffer similar structural damage, even though they may not have been directly hit. This type of damage can leave a business open to additional property loss, lost profits, business interruption and financial hardship.
Even if a structure or building wasn’t leveled by a tornado, it may have sustained severe wind damage that is difficult to detect. When we handle tornado claims, we don’t just accept the estimates provided by the insurance company’s adjusters. We obtain independent evaluations from professional experts, contractors, engineers, and independent adjusters – who all have extensive experience dealing with commercial tornado claims. In an environment where the insurers are seeking to minimize their losses, our prior experience in tornado cases is that they avoid or underpay the cases for properties near but not in the direct path of the tornado. That is when a knowledgeable, experienced property insurance attorney can make all the difference.
How Your Insurance Company May Operate In Bad Faith
Insurance law is clear. Insurance companies are required to conduct a reasonable investigation and promptly accept a claim unless they have a responsible basis to deny coverage under your policy. This is as true for small, medium, or large commercial claims as it is for owners of residential property.
Although insurance companies should honor valid insurance claims, our attorneys have witnessed instances where companies have underpaid claims or simply refused to pay. Many times this refusal to pay has nothing to do with the client’s claim, but is financially motivated by the insurance companies’ internal profitability metrics and loss ratios, and even how the insurance companies compensate their claims personnel and executives. At Raizner Slania, we understand how insurance companies operate, and we know from experience that these denials can have devastating financial effects on claimants whose properties are in need of urgent repair.
The normal insurance runaround gets exacerbated in the aftermath of tornadoes because a large number of policyholders are making claims at the same time and the insurance companies are making decisions about claims based on their own financial situation and projections instead of putting their clients’ interests first. Our attorneys have extensive experience working with clients who have been underpaid, paid late, and wrongfully denied by their insurance companies in cases of insurance claims from tornadoes and have succeeded in recovering what our clients were entitled to under their policies.
Raizner Slania Has Extensive Experience With Insurance Claims from Tornadoes
The attorneys at Raizner Slania are insurance litigation professionals whose main concentration is handling bad faith insurance claims. From helping the residents of Joplin, Missouri after the 2011 tornado to handling large, sophisticated commercial cases for North Texas commercial property owners following the severe hail events in 2011 and 2012 to serving on the litigation steering committee after Hurricane Ike’s destruction –its large size wreaking havoc on infrastructure and resulting in $25 billion in damages – we have focused on pursuing commercial insurance carriers that denied, delayed, or disputed insurance claims for our clients. The lawyer you select can make all the difference in how your claim resolves, and before hiring an attorney, you should ask questions about their experience and background. Too often, lawyers who practice in other areas decide to become insurance lawyers after a major storm, with results nearly as catastrophic as the storm’s fury. When seeking counsel for your insurance litigation, choose experience, and choose wisely.
If your commercial insurance carrier has acted in bad faith regarding your business’s tornado damage claim, the experienced insurance litigation team at Raizner Slania can evaluate your business’s potential claim. Please contact us today for a free initial consultation. We handle all bad faith insurance litigation cases on a contingency fee basis, meaning your business pays us nothing unless we help you recover financially.