Sign Georgia Banking Claim Simple

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[Music] there's a lot of Bowl that goes on in insurance claims in Georgia and there's reason for them they call this the Wild West of insurance claims they ask yourself one question do you feel lucky well Julia Punk now they're talking about property losses they're not talking about health and auto those seem to be pretty well regulated seem to be doing well honestly I have no idea because I don't deal with those claims so you could take this with a grain of salt in property losses in Georgia things are tougher and it really boils down to three big reasons appraisal is broken there's no extra contractual obligation in the litigation and there's a lack of regulation for property losses from the Department of Insurance so let's get into it why is the prison pool I need to start this video off by saying I'm not a lawyer do not listen to me for legal advice don't do it please that's out of the way I'm gonna have that wording broadcast on the end of this thing so you insurance adjusters that are watching this getting all pissed off at me on a regular basis you can stop drooling because you're not getting me on this one appraisal is broken because of some bad case law from a case called lamb versus allstate in lamb vs. Allstate there was this dude named lamb who had an aunt Michelle a roof and Allstate and he was paid for a repair only he demanded appraisal and they denied appraisal because it wasn't a difference of amount of loss you've all heard this before they went to court and the first few courts were appealed until it went to the Georgia Supreme Court and then lamb and his attorney didn't show up and so all state was able to convince the panel of judges that amount of loss is not the same thing as scope or coverages and even though there was a very split decision on this it came out that appraisal was only available for amount of loss and that did not include scope and coverages I want to mention no one defined the term scope or coverages in that case that's kind of a problem amount of loss is how much money it cost to bring that home lower back to whole how much money that scope of work is supposed to cost but because scope is not appraisal a lot of carriers are saying well if there is a difference of scope then we don't have to go to appraisal will deny appraisal or will go to appraisal but we're going to limit the appraisal panel to just this scope of work certain insurance companies if you have one estimate from the carrier and an estimate from your contractor and there's one line I am different between them they'll say it's a difference of scope and able to deny appraisal it is full everyone knows that amount of loss goes hand-in-hand with scope what has to be performed in order to bring them back to a pre loss condition that is what the whole insurance policy is for so if scope is taken away then the amount of loss doesn't really mean anything it's a broken system if you can't go to appraisal effectively then what else can you do well there's litigation available in a policy as long as you are able to litigate against the carrier within a certain amount of time and you get that done in a specific amount of time see my previous video about statute of limitations then when you litigate against them you have to hire an attorney and incur attorneys fees and the attorney's fees are probably not going to be awarded to you even if you win the case that's because in the state of Georgia the only way to get extra contractual obligations meaning special damages attorneys fees any kind of court costs you only get that awarded if the judge determines after you win the rain for its breach of contract so if you can't go to appraisal then what's the next option on there's Legation you could file suit against the carrier filed suit against the adjuster you have to make sure that you're within the statute of limitations of the policy which I talked about pretty extensively in a previous video if you filed suit against them you will probably end up with attorneys fees that you'll have to pay out-of-pocket because in the state of Georgia the only way to get extra contractual obligations from a breach of contract case is if you're also awarded bad-faith which is something that's kind of tacked on at the end and only if you're in front of a jury bad-faith is very difficult to get in this state bad faith means any frivolous and unfounded refusal and law or in fact to comply with the demand of the policyholder to pay according to the terms of his policy that's how they defined it not me so in order to get bad faith there is a reason ability test they asked the insurance company basically is there any reasonable explanation on why you didn't provide coverage or why you didn't make payment on a claim it's very easy to come up with a reasonable explanation for why you didn't do something less than 1% of insurance cases get bad faith awarded in the state of Jordan so pretty much count on not getting bad for the word hey if you're not going to get bad faith awarded and your attorneys fees are going to be due by you let's say it's 30% I think that's about the average for most attorneys and there might be additional expenses that you incur imagine if you have a $10,000 insurance claim now you're paying out 25 to 3,000 of that and then you still have to make the repairs when it's all done and you still have a deductible it's very unlikely that going to litigation is really in your best interest and the insurance companies know that if the insurance company knows that you can't go to appraisal because you have a difference of scope and they know that going to litigation is going to be in your best interest and do most that they would ever have to pay is the amount of the estimate that your contractor gave you then they know that they win if they just drag this out so that you go away that's why it's so hard in this stage the only regulations that the state has specify timeframes that the insurance company has 30 days to investigate a loss from the date that they are made aware of the claim given notice of the claim if they need more time they have to put in writing that they have a reason reasonable explanation of why any more time and that they request are more common then they have up to 60 days to investigate but that entire section says four claims are Auto policies so is there a time frame in Georgia for property losses there's nothing set most courts apply a reasonable dr. let's call it that - it weighs it reasonable the amount of time they took did they reasonably get back in touch with you did they respond your questions and answers within a reasonable amount of time did they knew everything that they could in order to establish that there was it wasn't coverage and do they have a reasonable explanation of why they denied it and if they do you're not getting the extra contractual obligation you're not going to get special damages you're not going to get anything from the carrier other than the most that the estimate was right before going to litigation and then you're gonna have to pay out to an attorney so unless you have an enormous claim going to litigation isn't in your best interest the Department of Insurance isn't going to help you out if you file a complaint because they only worry about broad strokes did the insurance carrier do the same Bowl to many people and if they did then they will go to that carrier investigate it and probably find them but they're still not going to force them to pay your loss you can't little appraisal if there's a difference of scope without the difference of scope what are you appraising anyway it's it's completely broken the whole system in Georgia is broken and the only way to change it is to actions the Department of Insurance the Commissioner right now commissioner King can change some of the regulations in any regulation he has promulgation authority over he just has to rewrite it publish it and then 30 or 60 days later it it becomes law but it doesn't have promulgation authority over the extra contractual obligation stuff he cannot rewrite portions of it that state that you have a private cause of action to file suit against any of the department's unfair claims on what practices that they have listed and if you can't file a suit against those specific actions and you can't file a bad faith suit the only thing you have is breach of contract so it's tough felicity so what are your options if you can't do any of that what can you do as an insurer well you can hire an insurance company that actually takes care of their people the Department of Insurance does have a website where they track how many complaints every insurance company has and how many of them are valid complaints as you can see which insurance companies as a percentage of the amount of claims that they have in this state have the most complaints and you can make some decisions on who you purchase your policy from based on that you can make sure you have a good agent that actually knows what they're talking about because your agent can be very useful and very helpful on your claim as long as they know what they're doing and they're not just a salesperson most of them are then you can hire a public adjuster to help you with your claim there are plenty of good public adjusters there is an association called the Georgia Association of public insurance adjusters I'm going to be a board member up they have their own website gappiya RG Apia org there is a list of members on that site you can go to that site and find a list of pas that care enough to make sure that they get educated on their trade that's why they join gappiya there are plenty of resources to find good public adjusters you need a good one and you need them involved as soon as possible because honestly you don't really have that much power in this state to really help with your claim otherwise and even if the public adjuster is unable to help you with your claim they can at least set it up for an attorney so that an attorney can take it from there and win it after the fact you have a much better chance of getting that bad faith unicorn if you have a good PA he's setting it up for you to begin with so it's not such a dire thing in Georgia but it's definitely more difficult than other states so you really need help let us deal with a boat whoa