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California Department of Insurance Cracking Down on Wildfire Underinsurance

In the past few years, the California Department of Insurance (“DOI”) has received thousands of complaints related to underinsurance. And it is starting to act.It has found misrepresentations and failure to pay claims against several insurers, as summarized below in their ongoing series of investigations, all titled “Following the Wildfires of 2015 and 2017.” While […]

Fire Season in California Begins for 2022

On May 11, 2022, a wildfire destroyed at least 20 homes in the Laguna Niguel neighborhood of Orange County. Fire season is beginning earlier each year. Meanwhile, the costs to rebuild continue to skyrocket. These costs are rarely reflected in a homeowner’s insurance coverage, which means that every year, hundreds of people in California who […]

Farmers Insurance Called to Task on Homeowner Underinsurance Claims

Farmers Insurance Called to Task on Homeowner Underinsurance ClaimsMost homeowner insurance companies in California have been avoiding responsibility for often massive underinsurance in their customer’s policies, in the wake of wildfires, by saying that it is up to the insured to select policy limits. Underinsurance has been an issue long enough that now some customers […]

California Appellate Court Clarifies When Underinsured Homeowners Can Sue Their Insurers

Wildfires have decimated swaths of California, leaving entire cities destroyed in their wake. Many of the homeowners affected by these fires have found too late that they were dramatically underinsured and cannot rebuild or buy a similar home. In essence, their insurance is useless to them.The Department of Insurance is aware of the problem and […]

The Rise of Natural Disasters and Your Familiarity with Your Homeowners Policy

Your news feed is constantly cluttered with natural disasters – wildfires, hurricanes, and floods seem to have become part of our daily conversations. According to a recent study by the Institute for Economics and Peace, natural disasters on a global scale have increased ten times since the 1960s.We often absorb this information with sorrow for […]