Jury selection has begun in a case of one Katrina victim versus Allstate in which the homeowners claimed that the insurance company didn’t pay out enough. The crux of the argument is that Allstate didn’t cover flooding on their standard policies, the homeowners had water damage but it’s difficult to clearly prove it was wind damage or flood damage.
See, with wind damage, the idea is that if the window is broken by, say, a branch and water enters the home, that’s wind damage. If the wind didn’t break the window, the water damage wouldn’t have occurred. Now, if all of your windows are broken and your first floor is damaged by water, is that flooding or wind damage? Now we’ll see.
The Weisses blame Katrina’s winds and possibly a storm-spawned tornado for demolishing their home in Slidell. Allstate said the hurricane’s storm surge was responsible for most of the damage, so they don’t want to pay any more than they already have.
Robert and Merryl Weiss were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the insurance company, but they say it isn’t enough. Theirs is believed to be only the second Katrina homeowners insurance case to be tried so far in a federal court in Louisiana.
Source: KTBS
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