court this is a story about a family and their new mayor here today a person home and we understand the particular challenges of that process the walking's the family we're here to talk about today they're no different maybe a little bit different but that's only because the walking st line which is french and the complicated paperwork and especially the insurance paperwork involved in buying a new home will be especially for the people who speak english only nd language at all times to cheer vera know that they were not living in the property at all times and when did they become aware of that and did they continue to accept payments of the premium after that time and have  premiums yet you have the premium being returned if if the contract never could exist because there was never at the formation of the contract entered into the opposing counsel version of the contract the qualification that needed to happen never existed they did not it wasn't their residence at the time but they accept payments then they would need to return those premiums because the contract was never formed properly loss now we're here to talk about only one of those excuses and that's because jay very claims about walking the insurance policy didn't provide coverage for the lost because they didn't move into the property on the very same day that they purchased that policy now i'm not talking about they never moved the property all i'm saying they did move in on the day that they purchased the policy so before we even get to the legal aspect of this argument that's not what the policy says and i agree that i haven't seen that requirement to the case law but but factually your clients never would then before the fire right they intended the home to be their residence they didn't get that and they actually never resided there before the fire so it's not a case for the on day to live there for three months the fire happened when the insurance company saying well you weren't there on the inception very tough luck you know i never resided there that's correct i'll give you i know they intended  i saw you recovered one hundred and fifty thousand from the agent i think that's because the agent it gave you the wrong policy which i guess that's very somewhat inconsistent with what you're telling us here but but how would that work if you were to get a reversal here when would that be credited against any recovery or that just the extra money how would that war yes that's right now the damage from separate to the damage that my client is seeking from g m their contractual damages and bad faith thing which is that these advantages are owed under a contract the damages that my client has sought against his insurance agent or their insurance agent was for negligence and that wasn't necessarily just because it secured the wrong policy there was there was quite a few things that agent had done wrong and i don't think that there would be any kind of balancing that needs to be done here because we have to separate causes of action and we have completely separate parties but i'd like to carry this just take a step further regarding what this means the practical application of this st day of inception rule ranks and i can tell you that i bought a home myself a few years ago and it's of me a few weeks to move into that property before i was sleeping there before i was getting mail there my fact it's even longer before i got mail there because that is a weird mailbox system but according to gee a very small human at my house burned down today if i had that policy i wouldn't be covered because i didn't reside at the home on the date the policy injected which is just absurd consequence of your ons and i expect i inspect and i suspect that most people would be in the same boat right now and what about the people who had only seemingly agree with you as a practical matter that this seems to serve as difficult how do we legally get there we don't in school roping give really what the district court did here was it said that my clients could not prove coverage therefore get very didn't have to assert any kind of policy exclusion for going coverage but it's simply not true i actually have here some language from the case of  bail the allstate turn from this court's in this court which says that under louisiana law the insured must prove coverage under the insurance policy that is the insured must carry the burden of persuasion to establish that any uncompensated or under compensated damage was caused by a covered peril then if the defendant insurer wishes to avoid liability by relying on a policy exclusion from coverage it has the burden to establish that uncomplicated or under compensated damage is subject to disclose and now according to this language the walking's only needed to have a status of their homes damaged by a covered peril to prove to prove coverage ok and they certainly did that when they they say that the that the policy was not in existence that it should be the senate is in declared void because it never was consummate of misrepresentation is simply not true not only did the the walking's not make any misrepresentation because it certainly was a homeowner's policy for their home they just hadn't had a chance to move into it yet thomas the industrial fire where we have a property that was damaged by a fire and a very similar argument was made and what happened was the court said well you know what the vacancy provisions that's allowed in louisiana law and actuality sixty days because louisiana law has been very clear that ensure it has sixty days before their insurance company can exclude coverage for vacancy i mean  the scenario you threw out earlier i agree is very troubling that under the language of this policy someone moves in on day two and a fire happens ten months later they're not covering that that's very problematic to me but it but if we think just having a general residency requirement is actually fairly standard and not absurd how do you how do we reconcile that ok so reconcile that in a couple ways st off the general residency requirement w still allow for periods of vacancy that is by statute incorporated into every insurance policy or every homeowner's insurance policy by way of the standard foreign policy but assuming facts and exclusion i know you don't argue that the bet you don't even get there if it's there is not a residency condition right here but you would still have a certain amount of data the policy can be unoccupied and this case in one of the cases that were cited and louisiana by my opposing counsel had the property being occupied with then the the sixty days leading up to the last i think you might have cited one that was applying the law for a different state but that's just not a clickable here so what we have here is a case where my client parts of property and they were certainly person for the purpose of residence there was no misrepresentation about that i think they had a certain right to leave the property unoccupied while they were getting ready to move into it and that's expressly written down in the contract there are thirty days to the vacancy that way they can get themselves ready can get into the property i think the real issue here is that my clients have proved coverage they prove that whenever they demonstrate the losses covered and the property was the insured property they purchase the property for the purpose of residence and before they had a chance to move then the house burned down and give air is denying coverage because they didn't live there on the very day the person the policy and nothing else this policy is absolutely agree to and that it would disallow people from collecting insurance proceeds where they certainly like me rightly should have  considered proving insurance coverage already had we did that in the bail case that already described other courts have considered the vacancy issue such as thomas and i've also described that i think these two things are go hand in hand together  where for example cases where a they pay for coverage like the cobble case at a paper covered for the structure then the issue of residency only came into question whenever it was additional living expenses and certainly you would expect  payment the q v accepted a modification of the terms except in the hypothetical by going to cause for matching the twenty years person living in the house or something over many many years of accepting payments where there was this dispute on one of the policy exists or not that that's going to get the client name in that was the st time they learn about this was during the examinations under no and they immediately issued a denial and followed up with this declared present and declare we don't holding best policy for these points because it was a new home that they wanted to move in i mean you're saying this is one that should only be for someone who's already in the helm what is there is there you know there's so much when you go in the insurance industry is there sort of different made an insurance claim the insurance company paid on a house that was contents and after he filed suit later saying they did they didn't pay enough they only raised the issue of residency with regard to a very narrow aspect of his recovery and that was for additional living expenses now it makes perfect sense that you would want to see residence for additional living expenses because the whole purpose of additional living expenses is you have to be relocated somewhere else or you have expenses because you cannot you can no longer live and the place that you were living before i mean i think corbell is completely unique and very different in fact from this case and i don't think we should be applying the standard for r i want to bring up that point too so and this particular case this is an electrical fire that happened to the house that had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the walking's are there that on the electoral far ignited in the home burned down th is nothing that has to do with the walking's not being this is going to happen and luckily they weren't there because they could have been seriously injured by force so that was that was one of the points i didn't want to make even if they can see was  a concern for the insurance company it had absolutely nothing to do with the fire here ok so didn't increase the rest is essentially what i'm trying to say now that mr nichols is saying  addressing the the standard fire policy provisions now and grice vietnam louisiana supreme court clearly stated that the provisions of the standard by policy including that sixty day vacancy requirement are included in all homeowners policies or whatever other reason you may be trying to differentiate these kinds of policies for the purposes of the vacancy exclusion they had the same language by statute they had the same language then and that was one of the the big considerations here really also made to the argument that this property may have been vacant prior to the inception date of the policy again because the standard foreign policy allows my clients shifty days a vacancy it was right for the policy which was insured and listed as insured on the policy their stories are made since this claim was made this is not a new argument this is not something they were trying to bury employees ok and the same thing can be said for it had a chance to move in yet and before they could the fire burned down it lost their entire investment and now g very strong deprived them of any recovery for that and frankly i mean i think this just goes to demonstrate a very bad thing