Cineus v. Citizens

Aron Rudman (Hollywood, FL)(First Party Property) obtained summary judgment on behalf of our client Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.  The homeowner Plaintiff had filed a Complaint for Declaratory Relief alleging that her property suffered damage to due to a roof leak reportedly due to wind and that our client had wrongly refused to cover her claim for homeowner’s coverage.  Citizens had denied the Plaintiff’s claim due to the fact there had been no peril created opening in the Plaintiff’s roof, and that therefore her loss was not covered, since the policy in this case excluded interior damages due to rain unless an opening was created by the force of wind and the rain entered through such an opening.  We filed a Motion for Summary Judgment and in opposition the Plaintiff filed an affidavit from an engineer who opined that the roof leak at the insured property was the result of a one-time wind event.  However, we challenged the admissibility of the Plaintiff’s engineer’s affidavit which we argued was conclusory and failed to meet the necessary requirements for an expert opinion under Daubert.  The trial judge found the Plaintiff’s affidavit was legally inadmissible and declined to consider it.   Our Motion for Final Summary Judgment was granted and our Motion to Tax Costs is pending.