Slabbed. One of many first issues anyone may discover from Hurricane Katrina’s path alongside the Mississippi Coast was the variety of buildings that had been a complete loss. After pulling off the particles, these buildings had been famous as “slabbed.”
Whereas social media journalism was nonetheless in its infancy, one such regional reporting effort concerning the plight of Hurricane Katrina policyholders was “Slabbed.” In Slabbed Retains Pounding on Coverage Protection Issues and the Litigation Discovery Coverage in Southern Mississippi, I wrote about Slabbed and its vital position to these impacted by Hurricane Katrina and struggling by way of the hardships of insurance coverage litigation:
Coastal Mississippi policyholders are properly served by the day by day and in-depth reporting by Slabbed. Writing day by day for this weblog is time consuming; posting two to 5 in-depth discussions every day should border on a full-time job. Currently, Slabbed’s posts have highlighted two vital points concerning insurance coverage protection and insurance coverage protection litigation in Mississippi. One, if insurance coverage corporations need to pay nothing underneath the all-risk coverage due to the anti-concurrent causation clause, a brand new kind coverage is required–even when the federal government has to sponsor it. Two, the insurance coverage trade is successful the lawsuits in Southern Mississippi as a result of they’re successful the invention battle over key info.
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I merely should not have time to learn Slabbed on a regular basis. But, I’ve no hesitation in suggesting that many can be taught a fantastic deal from the posts. The concepts are exceedingly authentic. I’m sure that these within the insurance coverage trade dislike Slabbed as a result of it does generally tend to demonize the trade and people supporting their establishment. Think about if all of your finest associates, neighbors, and household needed to endure monetary wreck brought on by insurance coverage not paying following a devastating disaster like Hurricane Katrina. I think about your rhetoric in direction of insurers and their brokers wouldn’t be very complimentary both.
Touring within the fire-stricken areas of the Los Angeles wildfires additionally has “slabbed’ whole loss buildings, which appear to go on without end. It’s merely arduous to imagine. I assumed that if I ever used my California Bar license in a disaster state of affairs, it could be in response to an earthquake and never an city wildfire that destroyed over 15,000 buildings.
What’s the one problem 95% of all these poor of us suffered on account of a complete loss, leaving them with solely a slab? They’re underinsured for the construction threat. The breadth and devastating penalties of the underinsurance plague don’t absolutely emerge till these mass whole loss conditions happen.
Actually days earlier than the Los Angeles blazes began, I warned about this looming disaster – now a actuality in California – in The Looming Homeownership Disaster: A Ticking Time Bomb of Underinsurance, Insurance coverage Premiums, Taxes, Systemic Losses, and House owners Not Capable of Pay for Prices of Possession. Now, we now have a gradual stream of wildfire purchasers coming to us with points concerning underinsurance.
Hurricane Katrina is clearly on my thoughts as its twentieth anniversary is upon us. We did some essential work following that storm, which I’m very happy with. Now, I’m spending plenty of my time working with our agency’s California-based attorneys on one of the vital novel occasions in our lifetime. Who truthfully would consider 15,000 buildings burning to the bottom in Los Angeles in 2025? Mass city fires had been over within the nineteenth century till lately.
The issue is that we aren’t studying sufficient classes to forestall lots of the identical points from repeating themselves. It’s nearly as if the insurance coverage trade says, “Effectively, that’s simply the way in which it’s” with out making an attempt to plan a way to repair the insurance coverage product and make it work higher for everybody.
One 12 months in the past, in “Why Are Policyholders So Ceaselessly Underinsured within the Occasion of a Complete Loss? What Can Repair the Underinsurance Downside?” I wrote about ideas specialists made on easy methods to appropriate the underinsurance downside. I famous the vital position of insurance coverage commissioners in doing one thing because the insurance coverage trade appears to need to do nothing about this vital problem:
Each insurance coverage regulator and insurance coverage commissioner ought to completely learn this work and take motion. The underinsurance downside is profound and impacts not solely policyholders but in addition raises its ugly head when co-insurance is taken into account and raised through the claims course of. It arises in litigation when policyholders ask me what accountability insurers and insurance coverage brokers have when whole loss buildings usually are not near having sufficient insurance coverage protection for rebuilding. Underinsurance is solely not good for anyone.
Rather a lot has modified in 20 years, and far remains to be needlessly the identical.
Thought For The Day
“Though the world is filled with struggling, it is usually filled with the overcoming of it.”
—Helen Keller
