Pay Up! is officially released for publication. We were planning to have a big book publication party in Tampa, but the coronavirus put an end to festivities with us all together. I think Pay Up! can help policyholders. The purpose of the book is to educate people about what to do when faced with insurance problems and how to purchase the insurance product for maximum value. Insurance is an important product and one that needs to work better for the consumer.
My recurrent thought while driving from devastated Marianna, Florida, to devastated Panama City, Florida, yesterday was:
“Will insurance companies and their adjusters stop caring about Hurricane Michael policyholders who are still suffering from their underpaid or denied insurance claims when the world is fixated upon coronavirus insurance claims?”
Instead of calls about those claimants who have not been paid, my phone was blowing up with people calling and emailing me about insurance coverage for lost income claims caused by the historic “shut down” of business, as I noted in yesterday’s post, Crash! Business Income Loss With No Insurance Coverage. To help those interested in keeping up with the onslaught of new articles about coronavirus insurance coverage, I will keep writing about the topic and refer you to other articles such as Bill Wilson’s excellent reference blog post, Coronavirus Insurance and Related Information. Wilson’s article provides numerous references to the crisis and insurance articles.
A very able insurance coverage attorney, Sharon O’Malley, wrote an article, Commercial Property Insurance Coverage and Coronavirus. I suggest my nerdy insurance coverage friends read if you want to be academically up to date on the issues which will be raised with coronavirus coverage. She concluded with:
If history is any guide, policyholders and their attorneys will attempt to advance creative arguments for coverage in response to coronavirus. The key to responding properly is a careful analysis of the specific policy terms and conditions at issue, informed by experience and relevant legal authority.
When judges indicate, “Mr. Merlin, your ‘creative’ argument……,” I know that it is not going to be good. But when they start with, “Mr. Merlin’s solid, logical, common sense or well-grounded…….,” insurance company attorneys like Sharon O’Malley and Steve Badger call their insurance claims adjusters and tell them to Pay Up!
My Louisiana colleague, John Houghtaling, filed the first coronavirus insurance coverage lawsuit. One interesting aspect of the lawsuit is that he is not asking Lloyd’s Underwriters to Pay Up! Instead, he is merely asking for a declaration from the court.
And that’s the way it is regarding coronavirus insurance coverage issues on this St Patrick’s Day 2020.
Thought For The Day
Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.
—Pope John Paul II
