Two clients’ lake house in North Louisiana burned to the ground over a year ago. While they were devastated by the fire, they knew they’d be able to rebuild because they had insurance in place. Unfortunately, the process of making a house fire insurance claim was not that simple.
Allstate Wouldn’t Pay the House Fire Insurance Claim
The insurance company, Allstate, took many months to evaluate the claim, seemingly looking for reasons to delay and deny paying it. Allstate went so far as to insinuate that the clients had burned the lake house down on purpose in order to collect the insurance proceeds. The trouble with this accusation was that it was simply not true. There wasn’t any good evidence supporting it. The clients are good people who just ran into some bad luck.
Even after cooperating with Allstate’s claim investigation– answering numerous detailed questions, submitting for an examination under oath, and communicating with the claims handlers regularly– the claim remained unresolved. The lake house remained a heap of ashes.
Clients Hired My Firm and a Lawsuit was Filed
Not knowing what else to do, the clients reached out to a colleague of mine, Attorney Luke Thaxton of Shreveport, for advice. In turn, Mr. Thaxton associated me on the case. We reached out to Allstate to see if we could resolve the case without a lawsuit. As it turns out, that was not possible. So we filed suit in the United States Middle District of Louisiana. A copy of the insurance lawsuit, redacted for privacy reasons, is available here.
Within a few weeks, we analyzed the supposed evidence of arson and debunked it. Next, using the insurance statutes and case precedents we presented the case to Allstate showing that not only did the clients have a high change of winning their case for unpaid insurance proceeds but would likely recover significant penalties and attorney fees at trial.
The Case was Successfully Settled
From there we were able to negotiate a fair settlement for a reasonable amount of money that was in the best interest of all.
Now the clients are on their way to rebuilding their lake house.
