up and said let me explain insurance companies to you the goal of an insurance company is to collect premiums and keep them and i thought well that's kind of a funny joke to start a seminar until i realized that the joke was on of time let's talk about what actually happened in this case i realize you disagree with them they disagree with you but take for example your claim for bad faith and punitive damages you've got major the district court treated the things that were sent to the arbitrator as in quotes reasonable the other claims were basically they're saying we  let's get a ruling once they got that then they paid promptly given the cases that i cited the state cases what do you rely upon for the idea that as a matter of law if you are not entitled to bad faith for punitive damages we rely on the facts and the facts are that state farm never conducted a fair thorough and complete investigation well that their counsel with respect that those are the course loaded words but the court here had to look at what was presented to it and at least i mean read the record i mean look at this you know i see we disagreed no question about it you were gresley from your part they were perfect they certainly weren't but the bottom line was they they for example with respect to the value of certain things on the policy they asked for an appraisal of their time to do that right yes but you've you've gone into the second step the first step was that these claims were made multiple times to them by letter with invoices with everything they never denied them at in at all and they're required by the operations manual to deny them in writing so it's a good story so you're saying that if any of our political leaders repeat repeat repeat we did that something is true that if somebody doesn't deny them every time they're true is that what you're saying i know how to get it i don't want to get into the point what i think you're missing on this is that state farm spent fifteen months denying coverage they kept saying these are not covered claims although they never said it in writing as they were supposed to until we got to litigation they simply didn't pay the claims they never disputed valuation there's not a single item in the record where they question the valuation of it with this by counsel you and i are looking at very different records because the record that i read shows that there were certain items that they didn't they didn't know what they were worth so they had an appraiser determine what they were worth and as soon as that happened they then paid the difference in what they paid you previously based upon what they thought previously they were  that wrong it's correct but it's eighteen months after the unit get that line i get that and that's an unreasonable delay and waiting they waited over a year before invoking the appraisal process and they did so three months before a trial because they knew they were going to lose the trial the judge judge of carl had denied the summary judgment on a breach of contract when it was cleared they owed money and so they  t complete one hundred eighty degree turn from denying coverage for fifteen months they suddenly said oh no we're we're questioning valuation which they had to do because appraisers aren't entitled to determine coverage issues flood and when did state farm make its july twenty seven twenty fifteen correct and did state farm make a payment to you on or about september fourth two thousand a certainly the claims because it was absolutely clear that the damage to the structure was flood damage resulting from the overpressure situation and isidro position when you submitted your claim mon july twenty seventh two thousand and fifteen you submitted for all of the material all of the support everything that was required from the standpoint of your obligation is the insured under the policy no we did not on that date let me explain what happened i was coming from court and got this frantic call from my wife that she came into the house and there are six inches of water covering the first floor and she didn't know what to do and she traced it to a second floor toilet hose that have been blown and i explained to her there is a shutoff valve there under the toilet and she got down and and shut off the water so it stopped the flow we'd both been out of the house for three or four hours at that point i called my state farm agent in the palisades and he referred me to the number to call the state farm and i filed the claim saying we've got massive flood damage we don't know the extent of it it's in the floors the walls the ceilings the carpets the hardwood floor the upholstery the electronics and all that and they sent in an appraiser are on claims adjustor out and over the course of the next thirty days or so we submitted the information to support the claims for example on the furniture that the claims adjuster said was completely destroyed we submitted invoices probably not as promptly as we could of but we had an interior designer come in and give us an invoice for replacement furniture for forty four thousand dollars telling us that was like kind and quality to what was destroyed but counsel you you obviously are an experienced lawyer you know that when you if you and i go to some furniture store over here and we buy a  new we got the got the invoice right there we paid for it and we put it here in the court and somebody leaves a water fountain on and it gets flooded and gets destroyed it's not worth what we paid for it even earlier in the day is that oh i understand there's depreciation exactly but the state farm paid on the furniture was three thousand dollars on forty four thousand dollars or the furniture that was furniture draperies carpets and pillows everything in the family room was completely destroyed because the water just came down and one might my wife's an estate planning lawyer and when people die  individuals fight over the stupidest things because their parents used to have them have no commercial value whatsoever fine and you have may have a wonderful room you'll love that you love everything but it may be oh i don't know it might have been brand new but it might be really old and commercially which is what the insurance companies deal with it may not be worth very much they obviously thought it wasn't worth what you thought it was i only run with that they're not you know i understand that but was probably  six or eight year old furniture that they depreciated down to three thousand dollars and then when we presented invoices for forty four thousand dollars they still refused to pay any more than the three thousand dollars to this if you had taken that custom made furniture and just to give you one example it was a huge l shaped sofa that was destroyed state farm's claims adjustor picked out something from wayfair that was the wrong color the wrong size  had no relationship to what we had and as i've said kindly in the brief it was perhaps the ugliest self on the on the planet and that's what they expected us to replace it with that's why we hired an interior designer to come in and tell us what equivalent furniture would be i wouldn't have a problem if state farm come in and say ok i see your invoices for forty four thousand dollars but this furniture really wasn't worth that we'll pay let's let's go back to the time line if we could please just for a second you if you followed your original claim on july twenty seventh two thousand and fifteen we established there was a payment made in early september twenty fifth when did you file your lawsuit against a very of twenty sixteen february of twenty sixteen so at the time you followed your lawsuit and you're already submitted dollars for medical bills that you claimed were cause for your spouse's medical bills you claim were caused by exposure to mold except her and her claim promotional stress no we hadn't because we hadn't gotten the diagnosis yet on pedestal and dry wall in the garage before you filed suit against it on we submitted the actual invoices for the repair work we also submitted the invoices for the hardwood floor we submitted the all the invoices for the alternative living expenses and we submitted the invoices for the replacement furniture so you submitted the fifty five thousand dollars for the three hundred eighty nine hours of supervision work that you had performed yes we did  let me and i know you want to reserve time your experience you've been you've been dealing with insurance companies it sounds like throughout your professional career did you actually believe that there was coverage under the state farm policy for three hundred eighty nine hours of supervision work and one hundred thousand dollars for medical bills the supervision yes because i do a lot of construction defects work and every single construction project i've ever worked on has a construction supervisor they had no construction supervisor and my wife was required to be the construction supervisor to explain what was going on and when she wasn't available i had to stay home and be the construction supervisor and i felt that was a legitimate expense under the policy but what state government does hired are or required that we hire somebody who would do  on the cheap somebody that was service master yes though you want to reserve ok thank you example of why the district court's judgment in favor of state farm was correct me the furniture expense actually came several months after the lawsuit was filed in february  letter they also indicate that there would be additional work and specifically they were asking state farm to pay for the fabric for the draperies for the couch and pillows it said receive and albright was going to be making the draperies so as you can see the claims continued to come not just right after the flood in july of two thousand and fifteen but including through and beyond the filing of the lawsuit state farm  dealing with eleven claims six of those claims were appropriately denied for coverage or denied because no further policy benefits were due including as judge christensen pointed out the supervisory time the medical expenses the emotional distress expenses state farm had already paid the mold claim had already paid the claim for the laundry room as the district court found there was a remaining claim for the show all that the district court also found state farm properly denied because the appellant's admitted that this year wall was damaged by their contractor and therefore state farm was not obligated to cover th from the state farm bureau and i'm sure this was developed through discovery and i haven't dug into it i apologize but how did state farm handle its adjusting of an ongoing claim after it's been sued it depends each case i different in this case it was by a lawyer that skilled in suing insurance companies much ok they chose to allow us to evaluate those damages as they were being presented allow sorry allow counsel to conduct discovery on those meeting requests the documents that something state farm would typically do for example the appellant said we have all these electronic expenses the responses where are those  invoices i did the same thing when that came up again during the course of the litigation asked for those invoices to support those expenses which eventually came long afterwards but state farm does not  ignore claims even though that occasion commences it continues to evaluate those claims the five remaining claims here however were the water here claim that was subject to illegitimate not only coverage dispute but there was some concerns about the destruction of the water here before state farm had the opportunity to review it especially given that it wasn't discovered to have been leaking until at least a couple of months after the initial loss so there were some and appellant's failed to satisfy their duties in the event of loss which require them to cooperate with state farm in part by giving prompt notice so that state farm can say look could you please save the water heater have the plumber see the water heater have somebody take pictures perhaps  something to that effect that they were not given that opportunity so there is a provision in the policy that requires policyholders to cooperate to do was that the water heater that was the alleged schorsch of the the right it was not the main source of the flooding so there were essentially potentially two claims really that was the july twenty fifteen water loss from the upstairs toilet the supply line leak two months and that was as a result apparently of some high water pressure that was fixed fairly promptly the water pressure was corrected nonetheless two months later or a little over two months in october of two thousand and fifteen state farm received notice of the the water heater leak which apparently had either gone unnoticed or had just occurred suddenly regardless state farm would have an opportunity under the policy to take a look at that water heater just as they did with the laundry room for example that came later as well i believe that was also in october of two thousand and fifteen state farm went out there or november to look at the laundry room and knew that the water he reserve gone but the point being each time an additional claim came up state farm was addressing those claims i'm going to how many claims were made by my calling began to go through this but how many claims in the aggregate were made by the futures after the lawsuit had originally been found and was not novel claims at that point the new claims would include the what we would call it the revived water in your claim the furniture claim which was a large expen the electronic claim which was another large expense and actually the ele would disagree with the powell and the elite related to the alternative living necessarily known to state farm before that time and even then there was some question as to what this alternative living expense was and we did conduct some discovery and eventually eventually got the receipts and the backup for that information but until the policyholder provides the actual information state farm can only do its best and in this case that's what it did even with the furniture expense during the course of the investigation it was provided with simply lists descriptions by the appellants of what that furniture was and although it may not have researched the exact furniture that the appellant's would have liked it did set forth cited to any any efforts by state farm to somehow deny them benefits in fact i would say this is a case demonstrating good faith once we got the appraisal award state farm received it and decided to not dispute any further to simply pay given the amount that the appraisers had reached and the appraisers did not agree with the appellants on each category in fact they disagreed on three of the five categories with  but wasn't the establishment of the park appraisal award the payment by state farm of that after adjusting for the two or three things that you mentioned was something then the predicate for elements for reach are you know you have to prove actual breach which i disagree that there was even a breach here payment without the requirement from the judge is voluntary she noted that she repeatedly attempted to correct the appellants when they misconstrued her ruling i think it's clear from the record that the excerpts of the record of page twenty six that during that hearing i formed the court that  farm would be voluntarily pain those those amounts that was a final status conference so we were up at trial in the court this report simply wanted to know what was left to try what issues were left she realized there were no issues left because if there are no damages what what is the jury going to be evaluating here so she decided to not decide the issue that at that at that point in time she decided that i needed to file my motion to modify and confirm the award by that friday page thirty three of the record in the transcript is where she asked me also at the same date to issue the checks by that time and that that was not an order or a judgment against state farm it was simply providing us with a date certain by which we had to do some things she was attempting to get the case moved along there had been some delays but it certainly wasn't an order that can be transformed into a judgment the appraisal award simply said the look at coverage issues what they're looking at is what is the value of this item or what is it going to cost to replace it or repair it and that's it that's why we see the caution at the end of the appraisal ward indicating that they've gone no further than that state farm acted appropriately by moving to modify that award in the port obviously agreed with the reduction that state farm had made but the payments had already been made by the time the court even confirmed the award so by the time she confirmed it we hadn't that state farm had made those payments and there was really nothing left to try so to to establish a breach of contract claim the  to satisfy those elements and they simply could not do that they concede that those payments were made they also do not dispute that with respect to the first six categories in their  that that the district court was correct in finding that state farm appropriately their denied coverage or withheld further policy benefits i think this case is is clear state farm satisfied its obligations the contract there's nothing left to do it's also clear that there was no bad faith and certainly no clear and convincing evidence of any malice oppression or fraud and for all of those reasons state farm would requests respectfully that first of all i'd like to correct a couple of the timeline errors made by ms rojas the all four of the five claims were properly documented and submitted before the lawsuit was filed she talks about the furniture claim not being submitted till august of two thousand and sixteen august of twenty sixteen was when the furniture was delivered it was ordered in december but it was custom made in north carolina took eight months to get it made but the cost of it was provided in december as far as the hardwood floor the the documentation for that was provided in december along with a check showing that i paid a fifty percent deposit and telling them that the work is going to be done in january they'd know it they never came out to look at it i told them we're going to have to move out of the house for four or five days because of the the polyurethane varnish you can't live in the house and there was no way to get in or out of the house without stepping on the hardwood i submitted the receipts promptly and if and if you'll forgive me a minor story on it two of the days we were out of the house my wife and i had breakfast at starbucks one day and at the jack in the box drive through a second day if i wanted to run up the costs on them i wouldn't have done that i was trying to keep the cost reasonable but four of the five claims were properly documented before the lawsuit was filed and we got nowhere as far as the water heater is concern notified them immediately the day that it leaked and told them who was going to replace it without a rudder heater we've got no hot water so i had never replaced immediately and i had to pay for it but they simply ignored the the information they most outrageous thing the judge did below was entering judgment for the state farm we were clearly the prevailing parties were awarded sixty five thousand dollars and state farm didn't pay anything voluntarily they were contractually obligated under the