Homeowners Insurance

[rocky2]

From what I gather some areas of high moisture/humidity suffer from mold build up in walls etc., wherever moisture builds up without air flow. Along comes someone with allergies and a medical report somewhere talking about mold related ailments...so the remodeling commences. Now some lawyer type suggest to turn the remodeling into an insurance issue. So it turns into "consumer" lawyer vs "corporate" lawyer...sorta like an animal eating their young...only the consumer ends up footing the food bill.

 

[bgott]

If you get moisture in your walls you'll end up with black mold. It's 50/50 on it being either the most deadly thing in the world or no problem at all. Some lady won something like $36 million from a lawsuit against one of the insurance companies so a whole bunch of people now have mold related respiratory problems. To get the stuff completely out of a house they have to basically tear down the house and start over. I've heard they have a method to kill it that works by tenting the house like you do for termites. Down here in Houston I think just about every house has some somewhere, 90 to a 100 percent humidity a good part of the year brings on or helps out moisture related problems. It'll probably be like blown in asbestos ceilings, the lawyers will make a killing for a couple of years and the news media will have lots of horror stories about it and then the experts will pop up and say that it wasn't really a big problem in the first place.

 

[dmccarty]

TBone,

The mold issue is the latest scam lawyers are using to get rich.

Basically if a home owner gets mold in their house they sue the
builder, contractors, etc., WHY? The story is that they get sick
due to the mold spores.

Now, I have been in flooded houses with SEVERE mold problems.
And I was coughing for days afterwards. But I hear alot of the
mold lawsuites are little itty bitty things that can be easily fixed.

On another forum a contractor/engineer, I forgot which, was called
into look into a house that had a mold problem. The home owner
demanded, in front of lots of witness thankfully, that he open up
a wall to see if there was any mold. He refused, refused and refused
since this would have made things worse. She kept badgering so
he opened the wall. It made things worse.

So she sued him.

If I remember the story right, she had hired HIM as a consultant
to help her case....

Now to defend the lawyers, many builders are using house wrap, aka
Tyvek, as a moisture barrier. Which it is not. Its a vapor/air barrier.
And the contractors are not installing the house wrap per the manufactuers
instructions anyway. SOOOOOOoooo, if water gets behind the siding,
which is almost always going to happen, you end up with wet wall
cavities. Moisture and now air flow means mold....

Then Health Problems.

Then a lawyer....

Later,
Dan McCarty

 

[rocky2]

Geez, notice no sympathy for lawyers at this site. 40+ grand a year in law school to be despised. My old uncle always said you could use lawyers and politicians (now one in the same) for drilling post holes 'cause they're so crooked you could screw 'em into the ground.

 

[TBone]

I agree Richard. My state is in a crisis right now over malpractice insurance. Doctors can't get it at any price and they are leaving in droves.

I think part of the problem is the greed of the insurance companies and the fact that they lost their $$$ with the downturn of the stock market. A lot of blame, however, can be laid at the feet of people who want "something for nothing."

Society expects doctors to make life and death decisions in milliseconds and then wants to crucify them if the decision turns out to be a bad one. As far as I'm concerned there was only one perfect man and he was a carpenter, not a doctor.

TBone

 

[wroughtn_harv]

As per the course I respectfully disagree with the inclination this discussion is going. Can't help myself. Been dancing like the devil so long I just naturally become an advocate.

Thank gawd for the lawyers.

Sometime go look up asbestosis just for grins. Most of the sites are put up by legal firms.

If it wasn't for the lawyers business would be still telling our dying that it's a virus and probably their fault.

The thing you must always keep in mind is that a lawyer isn't there to tell you what you want to know but what you need to know. The lawyer is your advocate. That means he's the one on your side period, end of paragraph, fold the page, close the book, end of story. So if your side involves someone else his job isn't to find justice. That's the judges and the jury's job. His side is your side. He's there to protect your interests. He's not there to protect the others. He's there for you, right or wrong, you and your interests only. If he's after justice he's in the wrong business.

I can't think of another thing that you can hire or have on your side that is so dedicated only to you except for a pet.

Of course if you're the one on the other side of the fence the lawyer might come off as a bad guy. And from your perspective you might just be right. Unless of course you have your own lawyer. Then you understand it's a lot less about right and wrong as it is about interests.

Another thing, those outrageous awards??????? The lawyers didn't do that. It's ordinary citizens like you and me. But the lawyers get the credit.

 

[cowboydoc]

You're exactly right Tbone. In most countries there has to be some kind of criminal neglect to sue. In this country you get sued for anything. About five years ago one of my friends got sued by a lady that came into him for a neck complaint. He told her she would be fine and sent her home. At the grocery store the next day she got into a wreck. She said it was because she couldn't turn her neck around to see. Her lawyer came after him for malpractice because he didn't tell her that she couldn't drive!! He won the suit but still had to go through the ordeal of being sued over nothing at all and his insurance rates increased just because he was sued even though he won the suit.

 

[rocky2]

"As far as I'm concerned there was only one perfect man and he was a carpenter, not a doctor."

Ain't that the truth.

 

[rocky2]

To an extent you're true. A few days ago here in PA some old lady bought a pair of 99 cent slippers at the local Wally-Mart and the point of sale cash register added tax (no sales tax on clothes in PA). Well, some leagal beagle turned around real quick and filed a class action. Did they go to the store manager and say "hey Skippy, no tax on clothes" and give them the benefit of doubt? Naw, file a suit. So grams got a hundred bucks (max for this type of suit) from Wally-World for an honest mistake. Or what about the drunk who climbed over a 5 foot fence, up a tree onto a porch roof and dove into an above ground pool (not his fence, tree, porch, pool). Making a long story short, the guy hits the water, and his head, becomes a paraplegic. Sue's the home owner and the pool manufacturer for negligence...and wins. Now there are extremes in all cases, and the juries do award the absurd...but I'd venture there are more bottom feeders in the legal field than there are Julia Roberts' attacking illegal and immoral activities by a big utility company. Ok, sorry...I spouted 'nuff on this subject.

 

[dmccarty]

rocky2,

I only had a one liner or two bad mouthing lawyers. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

But the Mold issue is a good delemter of the problems in the law.

One problem is that the contractor's may be building a faulty
product. Thus the need for the lawyers. But the lawyers have
a habit of swinging to far to one side and we all pay as a result.

Example? The policy cancelations and and price increases that
started this thread.

And the ABA spends lots of money during election years and
lobbying Congress to pass laws that are then used for the lawyers
to make money suing people. Tobacco lawsuits. ADA. And I ain't talking
dentists. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

One of North Carolina's Senators, Mr. Edwards, made his money
suing companies. Millions. He will be a Presidential candidate one
day. He provided service, and good service since he one millions of
dollars for his clients. But WE as a society paid for his riches in
higher premiums.

CowBoyDoc has high malpractice insurance which is driven
by the cost of lawsuits. HE has to pass on the price of the
insurance to his patients. So we pay.... And in some areas
Doctors are no longer practicing medicine because of the high
insurance rates.

Now, I have a couple of doctors I would like to sue. Really would.
But the lawyers won't take the case. To much work to do. Not
easy enough for them.....

The problem is the system. There is just too much money out
there to be made by suing companies. And the lawers who either
pay the CongressCritters or who are CongressCritters stack the
deck in their own favor. Human nature I guess.

I don't think alll lawyers are crooked cause they ain't but like anything
else it only takes a few in any group to make the rest look bad.

Later...
Dan