Isha Kumar and Kristyanne Cabrera obtained summary judgment in a first-party property insurance case in the County Court of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in Broward County, Florida. The plaintiffs alleged that MMP&S’s client insurance company did not fully pay their insurance claim based on a plumbing leak.  The insurance company asserted that it fully paid the plaintiffs through the pre-suit appraisal process, which is similar to an informal arbitration to resolve disputes over the value of an insurance claim.  The court agreed that the pre-suit appraisal properly resolved the dispute over the valuation of the insurance claim and the insurance company properly tendered amounts pursuant to the appraisal process. The plaintiffs then asserted that a third-party contractor’s invoice was still unpaid.  We argued that entitlement to the third-party contractor’s invoice was assigned away pursuant to assignments of insurance benefits and thus the plaintiffs had no standing to recover.  The court agreed that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue for invoices assigned to a third-party and noted the plaintiffs’ attempt to rescind the assignment of benefits post-suit was procedurally improper and did not grant them standing.  Thus, the Ccourt granted summary judgment in the favor of the property insurance company.

Practice Area: First-Party Property