Shaking Loose the Fraud

When earthquake activity increased in Oklahoma, we believe most insurance companies simply denied most earthquake claims—that has been the experience of the homeowners we already represent. Chances are your insurance companies wrongfully denied your earthquake claim as well. Insurance Companies may also have concluded your damages were less than your deductible and paid you nothing.

Insurance companies enlist its hand-picked engineering companies to rubber-stamp claim denials through boilerplate language that often blames damage to your home on prior earth movement or pre-existing damage—anything other than an earthquake. We are continuing to expose that these biased engineers are nothing more than a bought and paid for extension of insurance companies who have no intention of paying any earthquake claims in Oklahoma.

Ironically, we believe that despite being required to do so by the Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner, insurance companies overwhelmingly failed to conduct property inspections of your home (both interior and exterior) at the time you purchased your earthquake insurance, or at any other time before your home was damaged by an earthquake. So, while your insurance company and its hired-gun engineers may have seemed confident that the damage to your home existed before an earthquake hit, the fact is they had no justification for that position. Insurance companies had every chance to inspect your home before the loss, but if your experience is like that of our other clients, insurance companies failed to do these pre-loss inspections and deprived you of key evidence that would have potentially supported your claim.

Your insurance company has put you in an impossible situation. If your insurance company had inspected your home when it sold you the earthquake policy—as the Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner requires—then you would have the evidence to fight back. But because they did not perform these required
inspections, you are forced to fight with one hand tied behind your back. This isn’t fair, and we believe it is a violation of your insurance companies’ good faith duties they owe to all of their insureds. If you had your insurance company earthquake insurance and submitted a claim that was either denied or underpaid, your insurance company probably sent you an engineering report finding pre-existing damage or unrelated earth “settlement” and denied or minimize your claim for that reason.

The Oklahoma Insurance Department Set Clear Rules

for Handling Earthquake Claims.

In 2015, the Oklahoma Department of Insurance issued an Insurance Bulletin requiring that any insurers who denied a claim on the basis of “pre-existing” damage must have actually inspected the property prior to the inception of the coverage. So, what did that mean for your insurance company? It meant their ability to profit from selling earthquake insurance policies was threatened. Your insurance company could no longer deny claims on the basis of “pre-existing” damage without having evidence in their file that the so called “pre-existing” damage actually existed before the earthquake. The Oklahoma Department of Insurance also advised insurance companies that if it wanted to keep raising premiums on earthquake policyholders, as it had been, insurance companies had to justify those increases by proving it had actually been paying Oklahomans’ earthquake claims. These requirements continue to apply to most insurance companies.

It May Not Be Too Late—Even if Your insurance Earthquake

Claim Was Denied as Far Back as 2011.

If you believe your home was damaged by an earthquake 2011 until the present, and your claim was denied or underpaid because of so-called “pre-existing” damage, or unrelated earth “settlement,” or for any other reason, you may be entitled to a significant cash recovery from your insurance company. We believe the evidence will show that most insurance companies hid their bad faith conduct from you. That concealment allows you to come into Court even years after your insurance company handled your claim. But don’t wait, call us now.

We have the knowledge and experience to help you
get the money you are owed.