I’ve now been successfully defending home inspectors against meritless claims for a decade now, and with over 1,000 claims under my belt, I feel I’m qualified to describe the typical home inspection claim runaround competent home inspectors like yourself receive when dealing with an “issue” that really isn’t your “issue” at all.
I recently received a phone call from an inspector who was STILL dealing with an issue after two-plus years. The attorney representing him had, not surprisingly, been running up massive legal fees in the six figures without even the slightest desire to terminate the case. Why would he? His interests lied in his own billable hours driving fees as high as possible.
You can make this stuff up. And, wait, there’s more. Watch this week’s video to learn more about this typical “runaround” and how you can protect yourself with a complete risk management strategy.
The inspector’s deductible had long since vanished – and he had long since switched his insurance coverage to Lockton Affinity to avoid any future buckling to meritless issues. Visit this page to learn more about Lockton’s program. And Why would the insurance company defend this case? Unless it proposed to my method of squashing them, it likely ran an actuarial report and decided it was in their best interests to offer up his deductible as part of a settlement that was less than its cost to defend it. Even if logical, that doesn’t make it right.
The worst part of this ordeal is that the root of this complaint had been thoroughly documented in the home inspector’s report with corresponding photos. AND the inspector had an arbitration clause in his signed pre-inspection agreement. AND he had an exculpatory clause.