Lawmakers seek solutions to disputes, lawsuits

Jean-Marie Appleby arrived at her home after work on a Friday in May “and I opened the front door and all the water started rushing out,” she said.

The supply line to an upstairs toilet had broken, discharging water into a nearby AC vent and through the house’s ductwork. Carpeting, cabinets, wood flooring, plywood under the secondfloor carpet and much of the drywall were soaked.

Appleby had no way of knowing at the time, but she was about to become a casualty in a war between home insurance companies and water restoration companies that began in South Florida and spread statewide. The yearslong conflict has motivated insurers to promote their lower-cost “preferred vendor networks” over independent local companies and put policyholders like Appleby in the middle of billing disputes and lawsuits that can delay repairs for months.

Appleby, who lives in Ormond Beach in north central Florida, said she now knows she should have called an independent emergency restoration company to begin extracting water from her home immediately that night. Instead, she allowed her insurer to send a company from its preferred vendor network.

Had she hired an unaffiliated company, Appleby would have been asked to sign an affidavit called an “Assignment of Benefits” [AOB] authorizing the company to seek payment on her behalf.

Insurers see AOBs as an existential threat, and since 2012 have sought laws — unsuccessfully so far — restricting their use by restoration companies.

But companies outside of South Florida are fighting back, saying they are being unfairly targeted in the industry’s efforts to beat back “bad actors” from Miami-Dade and Broward counties that abuse the system by submitting hundreds of inflated and fraudulent invoices then swamp insurers with lawsuits to force settlements