Slabbed. One of many first issues anyone might discover from Hurricane Katrina’s path alongside the Mississippi Coast was the variety of constructions that had been a complete loss. After pulling off the particles, these constructions had been famous as “slabbed.”
Whereas social media journalism was nonetheless in its infancy, one such regional reporting effort in regards to 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 essential function to these impacted by Hurricane Katrina and struggling via the hardships of insurance coverage litigation:
Coastal Mississippi policyholders are effectively 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. These days, Slabbed’s posts have highlighted two essential points concerning insurance coverage protection and insurance coverage protection litigation in Mississippi. One, if insurance coverage firms need to pay nothing underneath the all-risk coverage due to the anti-concurrent causation clause, a brand new type coverage is required–even when the federal government has to sponsor it. Two, the insurance coverage business 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 shouldn’t have time to learn Slabbed on a regular basis. But, I’ve no hesitation in suggesting that many can study an ideal deal from the posts. The concepts are exceedingly authentic. I’m sure that these within the insurance coverage business dislike Slabbed as a result of it does tend to demonize the business and people supporting their established order. Think about if all of your greatest associates, neighbors, and household needed to endure monetary destroy attributable to 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’ complete loss constructions, which appear to go on perpetually. It’s merely laborious to consider. I assumed that if I ever used my California Bar license in a disaster scenario, it might be in response to an earthquake and never an city wildfire that destroyed over 15,000 constructions.
What’s the one problem 95% of all these poor people suffered because 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 totally emerge till these mass complete 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 Homeowners Not Capable of Pay for Prices of Possession. Now, we’ve a gentle stream of wildfire shoppers coming to us with points concerning underinsurance.
Hurricane Katrina is clearly on my thoughts as its twentieth anniversary is upon us. We did some crucial work following that storm, which I’m very pleased with. Now, I’m spending plenty of my time working with our agency’s California-based attorneys on one of the crucial novel occasions in our lifetime. Who truthfully would consider 15,000 constructions burning to the bottom in Los Angeles in 2025? Mass city fires had been over within the nineteenth century till not too long ago.
The issue is that we aren’t studying sufficient classes to forestall lots of the similar points from repeating themselves. It’s nearly as if the insurance coverage business says, “Nicely, that’s simply the way in which it’s” with out attempting 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 Incessantly Underinsured within the Occasion of a Whole Loss? What Can Repair the Underinsurance Downside?” I wrote about recommendations consultants made on how you can appropriate the underinsurance drawback. I famous the essential function of insurance coverage commissioners in doing one thing for the reason that insurance coverage business appears to need to do nothing about this important problem:
Each insurance coverage regulator and insurance coverage commissioner ought to totally learn this work and take motion. The underinsurance drawback is profound and impacts not solely policyholders but additionally raises its ugly head when co-insurance is taken into account and raised in the course of the claims course of. It arises in litigation when policyholders ask me what duty insurers and insurance coverage brokers have when complete loss constructions are usually not near having sufficient insurance coverage protection for rebuilding. Underinsurance is solely not good for anyone.
Loads has modified in 20 years, and far continues to be needlessly the identical.
Thought For The Day
“Though the world is stuffed with struggling, it’s also stuffed with the overcoming of it.”
—Helen Keller
