home inspector lawyer

The Kamikaze Claimant

One reads a lot of news stories nowadays about people who engage in so-called “self-destructive” behavior. I’m prone to feel sorry for these folks who can’t seem to help themselves, providing that the destructive behavior is self-confined, as well.

Unfortunately, that is rarely the case and the self-destructive behavior invariably causes collateral damage to other innocent bystanders.

I sometimes see home inspection claimants engaging in self-destructive behavior when they allow their perhaps understandable annoyance at the development of some unexpected problem with one of the systems in their new residence to morph into a full-throated and completely unwarranted attack on their home inspector’s level of professionalism.
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Charge More When Client’s Attorney Amends Your Agreement

Charging More for Client's Attorney Removing ClausesShould you allow a prospect’s attorney to line out the requirement in your inspection agreement about binding arbitration or the one that claims must be filed within one year of the home inspection?

Both clauses have value to home inspectors. In this week’s video blog, I discuss the value of these clauses, BUT also detail how you can use the attorney’s/prospect’s desires to omit these clauses as a valuable tool to charge more for the inspection.
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Another Groundhog Day

Since our kids have grown into responsible adults and are no longer needing or wanting to be around us for longer than necessary, Lady Agag and I have been spending more of our time at the seaside, especially in the so-called shoulder seasons of May-June and September-October.

At the moment, we are half-way through what local meteorologists are calling “the best week of the year” weather-wise at the New Jersey shore. I cannot disagree. The temperature has been a very-tolerable-for-Irishmen eighty-ish and the humidity has been blessedly low every day so far and it is forecast to continue so. It’s a bit like Groundhog Day.
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My Subrogation Secret Sauce

Subrogation Cases Against Home InspectorsInsurance companies will sometimes pay a claim to a homeowner and THEN try to recover the financial losses from the home inspector through a process called subrogation.

In subrogation, one party succeeds to the rights of another either by law or by contract. In this process, the home inspection insurance company blames the home inspector for the issue at fault EVEN if the homeowner does NOT blame the home inspector.

There are a growing number of subrogation cases that involve a home inspector’s professional liability. However, these claims CAN be squashed, as they are just as meritless as many other home inspection claims.

I describe how to protect yourself and fight back against subrogation claims in this week’s video blog.
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Joe Ferry’s Fight For YOU Against Meritless Home Inspection Claims

People ask me regularly to explain my business’ mission – and while the end result is easy to quantify (get rid of meritless home inspection claims), its power is best rooted through video, as you can see below in this video that clearly answers WHAT I do and WHY you need me on your side! My interest is in squashing these meritless home inspection claims before they destroy the professional reputation and livelihood of home inspectors across the country.

99% of ALL home inspection claims have NO merit – and you shouldn’t have to fork over valuable capital or lose your insurance deductible to a claim that has NO merit!

Click ‘More’ to watch why you need Joe Ferry on your side.
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Subrogation Claims Against Home Inspectors

To the ever expanding list of rent seekers that Home Inspectors have to fend off, please add insurance companies that have paid a first-party claim on behalf of a homeowner and then want to recover that payment from the home inspector through subrogation.

Subrogation is a legal concept whereby one party – the subrogee – succeeds to the rights of another – the subrogor – either by operation of law or by contract. The most familiar examples of this concept involve insurance companies that pay losses sustained by policyholders and then seek to recover those payments from tortfeasors that may be legally liable for the policyholder’s loss. The insurance company by virtue of its payment would succeed to the policyholder’s rights against the tortfeasor.

Thus, if an insurance company paid a collision loss on behalf of its policyholder who was not at fault in the accident, it can seek to recover that payment through subrogation from the driver who had actually caused the accident. Health insurance companies and workers compensation insurance companies who pay medical bills on behalf of their insureds will endeavor to recover those outlays from parties who may be legally responsible for causing their insureds’s injuries.
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Boxcars

There’s nothing like a birthday to drive home the point that life has stages: the Immortal Stage that lasts until about age 55 and the Mortal Stage where I am now gaining seniority at a breathtaking pace. Today, I am turning 66. A pair of sixes. Boxcars.

Ever since I became the Irish Patient, I’ve become much more conscious that life has limits. On length. It’s a depressing thought and one you need to let go of for your own sake, as well as the sake of others within your gravitational pull.

Fortunately, there are other spheres where life holds considerably fewer fixed limitations: happiness, job satisfaction, friendships, personal achievement, learning and the like.

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Don’t Create Problems Where None Exist

One aspect of human nature that has always baffled me is the tendency on the part of some people to create problems where none really exist, notwithstanding that I have been living with a member of that tribe for the last thirty-one-and-a-half years .

To these folks, a rainy day at the beach is an enormous problem. To me a big problem would be something, say, on the order of getting a leukemia diagnosis. Do you see the difference?

Several years ago, I was out sailing with some friends and one of them accidentally threw my anchor overboard. Unfortunately it wasn’t connected to the boat at the time. When he realized what he had done, he was extremely upset and nigh pathologically remorseful. I told him to forget about it. But he wouldn’t let it go.
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The Story of Joe Ferry’s ClaimIntercept and How to Receive It

When I first began presenting my home inspector training at the Law and Disorder Seminar back in 2007, many of the inspectors in attendance would approach me afterward and ask if they could retain my claim squashing services on a pre-paid basis – a pre-paid legal of sorts.  While I appreciated the sentiment, I was very wary of providing such a service for a number of reasons.  For one, I did not have any idea of how to price such a service or, indeed, what services to provide.  Or what the inspectors’ expectations might be.  So I simply said that it was not something that I had ever considered doing but would give the matter some thought.

Three years later, after having defeated over 150 claims aborning, I really did begin to give it some very serious thought.  I thought about how truly ridiculous the overwhelming majority of claims against home inspectors are.
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You Don’t Need A Weatherman To See Which Way The Wind Is Blowing

A couple of home inspectors in West Virginia recently alerted me to a hot-off-the-presses West Virginia Supreme Court decision that invalidates Limitation of Liability clauses in home inspection pre-inspection agreements. The case, Finch v. Inspectech, LLC, No. 11-0276 (W.Va 2012) can be found here.

The Court’s reasoning, which I found quite compelling, was that the State licenses home inspectors and prescribes a Standard of Practice for the precise purpose of protecting lay consumers from incompetent providers. Thus, contractual provisions that purport to limit that protection thwart the legislation’s intent and are, thus, contrary to the public policy of the state and unenforceable.
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