home inspector lawyer

No Country For Old Inspectors

There is nothing like a road trip for restoring your faith in the future of this country and reminding you that, despite our manifold problems, the present is pretty awesome, too.

As I write this, I am sitting at the departure gate for my flight home to Philadelphia after having spent a few extra days in New Hampshire and Maine following the presentation of the Law and Disorder Seminar to about 25 home inspectors at the ASHI Northern New England Chapter’s Spring Conference in Eliot, Maine.

The inspectors who came to this seminar were all seasoned veterans and virtually all of them had had one or more bad experiences with an unreasonable client, a cowardly insurance company, an unprofessional real estate agent or a vindictive seller that had caused them considerable agita and cost them lots of money. In other words, this was a sampling with a margin of error of zero.

This, of course, is not exactly terra incognita to me. I am accustomed to inspectors being shocked, shocked that their insurance company would pay a bogus claim, or would immediately offer their deductible to the complaining former client, or would assign them an attorney “who didn’t seem to know anything about home inspections” and who would churn the file, running up legal fees for years, before eventually caving in and settling the case for “nuisance value.”

And I am completely inured to the astonished reaction from veteran inspectors who are hearing for the very first time in their inspection careers that there is no longer any reason for them to stand for this nonsense. That there is a new sheriff in town! That their days of routinely refunding inspection fees are over!
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Accept No Substitutes

The other day, I got a call from an old friend and a long-time ClaimIntercept™ subscriber. He had been contacted by an E & O insurance monger retailing a product with a price that he found attractive and he wanted to talk to me about it.

I had never heard of the company but that is certainly not a disqualifying factor. After all, there was a time in my life when I had never heard of The Travelers. That’s another way of saying that there are lots of insurance companies that I have never heard of — and that you have never heard of — that are good quality, financially sound companies that serve niche markets and do so very professionally. It’s a big competitive world. What a country!

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Only 1% of All Home Inspection Claims Have Merit

Only 1% of Home Inspection Claims Have MeritA home inspector who serves on his state’s licensing board told me that 6% of the licensed inspectors in that state had claims brought against them and that 90% (yes, 90%) of those claims had merit.

Those numbers were completely at odds with my experience where less than 1% of home inspection claims have merit, so it made me wonder if the insurers on those claims were doing any investigation whatsoever or perhaps they just don’t know what constitutes a meritorious claim.

Let me tell them (and you) in this week’s ClaimsAcademy video blog. This is a valuable piece of home inspector training.
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Insurance Companies Want Home Inspection Claims to Live

Insurance Companies Want Home Inspection Claim to LiveHome inspectors are EASY targets. It’s a sad fact that many home inspectors are victims of meritless claims while receiving little assistance of those they thought could be counted on: their insurance company.

Many home inspectors are SHOCKED that their insurance company would settle a meritless claim or offer up their deductible to the complaining client. These inspectors also work with attorneys who rack up legal fees before settling the claim for nuisance value.

Why is this the case? I talk about working with professionals who align with your values and beliefs in this week’s video blog.
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Is E & O Insurance A Waste Of Money?

Home Inspectors frequently ask me if having E & O Insurance is “worth it.” The unspoken subtext of the question, of course, is “Hey, if I never have a claim, haven’t I wasted my money?”

I guess that the answer would be “Yes”, if you felt the same way about any other line of insurance. If you never have an auto accident, never have a health issue, never have a house fire, never lose time from work due to sickness, have you wasted the money you spent on auto, health, homeowners and disability insurance?

The problem that I think that home inspectors have with legacy E & O insurers is that they don’t really trust them to do the right thing. And with some considerable justification.

I’m currently representing an Arizona inspector in a multi-party claim: the seller, a seventy-something woman, the real estate broker, a very successful entrepreneur and the inspector. The claimants are a real estate lawyer and his wife.

The lawyer-claimant wrote the Mother of All Demand Letters, a real magillah, fourteen pages, that sought $150,000 in damages. My response, according to counsel for the other defendants, “really infuriated him.”

Well, good, I thought. My fastball has not lost any of its velocity.
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New Negotiation Rules for Home Inspectors!

New Negotiation Rules for Home InspectorsCan anyone alter a contract even if they aren’t the company that drew it up? Absolutely.

What if a client and/or his attorney wants to remove the arbitration clause or statute of limitation clause from your home inspector pre-inspection agreement? Is this worthwhile to you and can you use the omission of these clauses to your advantage?

Joe Ferry answers these pressing questions in this week’s ClaimsAcademy video blog below. (more…)

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Don’t Just Rate It, State It in Home Inspection Report!

Don't Just Rate It, State It in Home Inspection ReportWhat home inspection report methodology works best – narratives or checklists? Many home inspectors have varying views on this issue, but I provide a logical assessment in support of one of these methods from a legal perspective.

What method keeps your business safe? What method is more likely to safeguard you from reckless clients and their meritless claims? I analyze each method and their pros and cons in this week’s ClaimsAcademy video blog below.
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Inspection Agreements: Is There Anything They Can’t Do?

When home inspectors contact me to squash a claim, there are three documents that I always ask for: All correspondence with the claimant, the Inspection Report and the Inspector’s Inspection Agreement. These documents essentially constitute the “claim file” and invariably provide a torrent of reasons why the claim will fail.

After having sucessfully dispatched over 300 home inspection claims since 2006, I never expect a claim to have any merit and my expectations are never dashed. Of course, claimants and their attorneys, by and large, do not regard the mere fact that a claim has no legitimate predicate as any obstacle to making it. Indeed, their most frequently and fervently expressed desire is that the inspector “turn [the claim] over to your insurance company.”

And who can blame them? After all, most insurance companies operating in the home inspector professional liability field do not regard the mere fact that a claim has no legitimate predicate as any obstacle to throwing money at it. As long as the amount does not exceed the insured’s deductible, that is.
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Good News for Arizona Home Inspectors! Not!

“Good News for Arizona Home Inspectors!” was the headline on a blurb sent to members of Arizona ASHI. What was the “Good News”? The Arizona State Board of Technical Registration – the guys who impose preposterous punishments on home inspectors who have had the misfortune of being the subject of a complaint by their delusional clients – had been operating under the truly ludicrous notion that there should be no statute of limitations for home inspections. In other words, to the citrulls on the Board, you should be subject to suit for a claimed negligent inspection until the end of time. And beyond.

How professional licensing boards always manage to comprise a startlingly large number of knuckleheads would be, it seems to me, an interesting avenue of scholarly inquiry for some enterprising doctoral student.

So the “Good News” for Sun Devil inspectors is that the Arizona State Legislature has reduced the time within which a home inspection claim can be brought from whenever and forever to four years. While four years is a damn sight better than the incumbent standard, which remains in full force and effect until the legislative session mercifully ends, pardon me if I seem underwhelmed by this legislation.
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