Christopher Sabater (Miami, FL) (Property) obtained Summary Judgment in a late notice Hurricane Irma (2017) first-party property insurance claim against Citizens. The claim was not reported until January 8, 2020. During the claim investigation, Citizens sent out a Reservation of Rights Letter and 2 Request for Information (RFI) Letters requesting documentation that would support the alleged cause of loss/date of loss. The Insureds never responded to the RFI Letters. Moreover, none of the provided documentation predated 2020. Citizens denied the claim for prejudice because of the late reporting and failure to respond to the RFI Letters.
The Insureds filed a Breach of Contract complaint. During litigation, the Insureds were deposed, and they admitted they knew about the damage back in 2017, right after the hurricane. The Insureds further testified that they did not hire a water mitigation company and that they performed repairs prior to providing notice of the claim to Citizens. The Insureds claimed they did not have any receipts from the repairs and there were no photographs taken prior to the repair alterations. Thereafter, we filed our Motion for Summary Judgement (MSJ) for Prejudice based: 1) Late Reporting, 2) Failure to Respond to the RFI Letters, and 3) Conducting Repairs prior to notice of the claim and not documenting the alleged damage prior to conducting repairs. Plaintiff filed a Response to our Motion for Summary Judgement that was supported by the affidavit of Engineer Grant Renne. The judge agreed that this case similar to Perez v. Citizens Prop. Ins. Corp., 343 So. 3d 140 (Fla. 3d DCA 2022).