ORLANDO, Fla. – A Florida couple is suing their insurance company’s adjuster claiming he manipulated his equipment in order to lowball their claim.
Davis Miranda filed a lawsuit against his insurer four years ago for breach of contract for not paying out a claim for a water leak.
It has been in litigation since then, and last month he filed a second lawsuit claiming fraud.
The company said it’s not true.
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Miranda, and his partner Kimberly Chauvin, said their house has been damaged for years, waiting for a resolution.
“It’s terrible. It feels like you’re getting ripped off,” Chauvin said.
In 2018, the couple discovered there was a water leak coming from inside the wall behind their stove.
They said they immediately called their insurer, Universal Property and Casualty Insurance Company for direction.
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“I had never been involved in a claim before and neither had Dave. This is Dave’s first home,” Chauvin said.
The adjuster estimated in his report there was no moisture in the walls and the repair would be $835, not enough to meet their $ 1,500 deductible, according to Chauvin.
“At the time all the walls obviously were still intact. We had no idea what was truly happening,” Chauvin said.
Months later, while still trying to resolve the issue with the insurer, the couple said they started to smell mold.
They hired a public adjuster who found there was a much bigger problem: there was moisture in the walls and a lot of it.
“All the bottom cabinets had mold,” Chauvin said.
They found mold behind numerous walls. Cabinets had to be taken down and sheetrock ripped out.
Miranda is suing the insurer for breach of contract and suing the adjusting company and the initial adjuster for civil conspiracy and fraud.
The lawsuit contains pictures of the initial adjuster taking a reading with the moisture meter and alleges he “is making it appear he is taking a reading” but is “manipulating the sensor pad on the rear of the moisture meter with his finger to register a reading,” according to the lawsuit.
The adjuster did not “disclose the true level of moisture in the affected areas of the property,” and because of the “false and fraudulent readings,” the insurer “refused to issue any payment, according to the lawsuit.
Paul Canella is the couple’s attorney.
“I think without question that it was intentional,” Canella said. “I think that this is probably not an isolated incident. We will probably see more instances of them doing this.”
“You pay the insurance company. You do what you’re supposed to do. And you just never expect it to happen to you,” Chauvin said.
Travis Miller, a spokesman for Universal Property and Casualty Insurance Company also known as UPCIC, and Alder Adjusting, said the allegations are false and referenced the first lawsuit for breach of contract in his statement.
“Recently, as the trial date approached, Mr. Cannella began threatening to bring a separate action against Alder Adjusting and Mr. Hill, based on erroneous allegations he previously has raised in the pending UPCIC litigation, if UPCIC would not agree to his inflated demands,” Miller wrote in an email to News 6.
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