JEFF RAIZNER: The insurance industry has been nothing but a roadblock to recovery standing in the way of getting your home repaired, getting your business back in order, getting your feet back on the ground.

CHRIS BERTINI: On September the 13th, 2008 Hurricane Ike hit Galveston Island. My name is Chris Bertini. I’m an attorney working with Doyle Raizner. I have an office in Galveston. On that day, my office took eight feet of water. My house was destroyed. My family has been split apart.

Two days later I got a call from Jeff and Mike, my friends, saying Chris, we’re here to help you. Come to our office, bring your staff, bring your family, stay at our house.

… More

When our clients hire us and come to us they have had insurance companies come out to their homes sometimes as many as twelve times. This is a delay tactic. When you hire Doyle Raizner and Bertini & Associates, we send an adjuster to your home immediately.

Our adjusters assess the damages to the property, and we gather the documents necessary to understand and evaluate the claim. Then we send a demand letter to the insurance company outlining the appropriate payment due under the policy. We try to work with the insurance companies to resolve the claims quickly and efficiently, but we have often discovered that insurance companies refuse to honor their obligations.

So we do the one thing that gets their attention; we sue them. And that is what we are doing right now; we are bringing these cases to the courts to force these insurance companies to do the right thing.

We are working with our clients to resolve their claims as quickly as possible because we understand what it means to go through this frustrating process. They are tired of delays.

They are tired of the unnecessary inspections and re-inspections and re-inspections to get what they are entitled to. The insurance companies have all the information they need to resolve your case.

When you hire Doyle Raizner, when you hire Bertini and Associates, you are going to have our phone numbers. You will not be a file number or claim number or policy number. You are going to be a friend and a family member that we are going to work for because my friends and my family have lost everything.  We are tired of it.

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http://www.doyleraizner.com/blog/.

Like many other homes and businesses, the Balinese Room was destroyed during Hurricane Ike.  Build on a 600 foot pier at 21st Street and Seawall in Galveston, the Balinese Room over its lifetime hosted such greats as Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Jack Benny – and generations of Galvestonians.  It survived Hurricanes Carla and Alicia, and was vacant for nearly 20 years before being restored by Scott Arnold and his Arnold Properties, Inc. in 2001.  All that remains today are the pilings shown on the photograph below – and the memories of those who participated in its history.  Unfortunately, TWIA has not honored its contract to fairly and reasonably protect the financial, historic and cultural value of this important part of Galveston history.  A copy of the lawsuit petition is attached.  FS – Original Petition.pdf

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Hearing on Texas Windstorm Depositions in Harris County.

Today Judge Mike Miller conducted a hearing on depositions in Texas Windstorm cases pending in Harris County.  Currently, the depositions of certain Texas Windstorm executives are scheduled to take place beginning in late March and continuing into early April, and the depositions have been noticed in Galveston County under a deposition order.  We have been concerned that Texas Windstorm is not moving promptly to complete production of written discovery, including documents about their claims handling practices, and that Texas Windstorm would use its own delay in producing documents as an excuse to further delay depositions in these cases.  Doyle Raizner does not believe the deposition process should be delayed further, and accordingly we filed a cross notice of these depositions in our Goddard v Texas Windstorm case.  Judge Miller determined that the depositions should proceed under an order that obligates Texas Windstorm to produce its witnesses for deposition promptly.  The Court’s order will be posted within the next several days at the Court’s website:  Harris County Ike Docket

Technorati Tags: Houston Hurricane Attorney, hurricane insurance claims, Insurance dispute

November 20, 2009:  A Galveston County jury found that Zurich American Insurance Company acted in bad faith in delaying and denying a workers’ compensation claim of a 44 year old Galld sandblaster injured on the job in October 2007.

The jury found that Zurich unreasonably delayed income  benefits for four months, and delayed Doyle Raizner client Jerome Ryan’s medical care for his injured shoulder.  Zurich failed to obtain medical records from Mr. Ryan’s doctors, claimed that Mr. Ryan could not chose his own treating physician, and refused to pay him income benefits or for his medical care until ordered to do so by the Texas Department of Insurance.

The jury in Galveston County Court at Law No. 3, Hon. Roy Quintanilla presiding, awarded 1.384 million in damages, including $500,000 in punitive damages.

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Chris Bertini lost his office because of Hurricane Ike.
Below are the pictures of the aftermath.

“I’ve been practicing law in Galveston for 19 years. This is what was left of my office after Ike. People often ask “What did you lose?” I lost EVERYTHING! My office had 8 feet of water and I lost the home of my dreams.”

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Jeff Raizner: (Transcript from video)

One of the biggest problems that we’ve seen from the insurance companies is what happens when they send their adjusters out there in the beginning. We are seeing this from many clients and from looking at everybody’s home and businesses. What happens is the insurance companies come out there the first time and give a clearly low ball estimate.

No reasonable insurance adjuster, no reasonable insurance company would look at a house with a roof that is gone, completely damaged and say it would cost a thousand dollars to fix this. Then they come out a second time with a different adjuster and maybe provide a little more money, but it is still not appropriate and still not the right amount.

What we do when we get involved is send out an independent adjuster who does what the insurance company was supposed to have done the first time, looks at everything, actually climbs on the roof, actually looks at the walls, looks at the outside, spends some time there and provides a fair and a honest estimate of what the damages are.

We then get that to the insurance company and sometimes they will pay a little bit more voluntarily and sometimes they won’t. Most of the time, the case will have to end up in a lawsuit and that is when we can get into the position where we can get the results for you.

Technorati Tags: hurricane insurance claims, hurricane insurance dispute, ike dispute