expands you must leave the floor coverings you must open walls and you must examine for the full extent of damage they did not do that but failure to conduct a full investigation of the extensive damage is a breach of the insurance contract what the judge said is they had to be written designation in order for him to have acted on their behalf that's not what the law requires a lot of the requires that any person acting under the authority of law for another can pursue a claim on behalf of the claimant the evidence was that mr singh contacted mrs varian and then identified additional down she authorized him through her attorney go to state farm and it didn't occur to mr saying that a written authorization might help if they had identified but that is what they think i did i asked a slightly different question it did not occur to mr singh that that might have helped  fact an agent that's the way it's interpreted by the insurance regulators in california there is no case that we know of that we have power to specifically restrict the term attorney has used in  regulation to an attorney licensed to practice law in the state is really a law that you know little expanded to be internally in fact in fact what we have looked at the question of what constitutes an attorney or someone acting so into law because that was the clause of the insurance regulation that we were and in that context based on the research we did it was clear that agency rules applied and anybody who by operation of law had a right to act on behalf of another was authorized under law and we submit that that would include mr skilling now but let's let's get past that for a second because if i whether or not mr singh was being recognized by the farm as an agent of mrs varian or state farm nevertheless had an independent duty to mrs  to go back and inspect that property when it came when it came into knowledge of facts from any source that its prior adjustment may have been incorrect or incomplete even when they had no communication from the policyholder even if they had policy holder refuses or at least fails to provide any evidence that he has any written evidence that he is acting on her behalf you contend there is an obligation to come out after they've paid her for different twenty four separate occasions  go back again and look some more and maybe it's time to do a further more thorough investigation to find all of them which in this particular case it was clear after the first time that they went out that the investigation was sho more she comes back to them and say now you've underestimated that that damage it's going to cost much more than that take a look at what my contractor said they'd pay her again all of this while before we knew that there was a crack  that extended it extended into the house under one roof that they were spawning in the slab there had been broken that they had under their own guidelines the duty to pull out flood coverage to fully investigate that too bulging in dry wall to take up the drive on examine how much structural damage if there was any in any other displacement of interior walls machinations they knew they had to do the things they didn't do practice in those days was will pay when you do the work and incurred that's not a lot the law is that they have to pay the full amount of the damage necessary amount let's try to repair the contractor would do the job without propping overhead abundant evidence that the investigation was poor been blew it was for they knew what they were required to do their own guidelines establish what they were required to do and they didn't do it there is no way that in the face of that record evidence from their own records confound it by the additional evidence that mr kabbalah missing in this environment independent adjuster had gone to them it looked that far more sense of evidence and by the way you didn't pull up the floor coverings we did and that crack extends to all across the family or into the kitchen talking about the others who was preserved the jury verdict substantially was on the which does not talk to any earthquake damage but significant earthquake damage and the second question relates specifically to what he is consistent with his report namely that if he had found significant earthquake damage he would have identified it does not ever say in his report that there was no earthquake damage in fact but he did so the damage to houses caused by ordinary earth movement and he also testified that such ordinary earthmoving can be accelerated an appears to be the result of skill consolidation lateral creep of kill soils on the issues of the building or a combination of silt consolidation and lateral creep signal  that the extent of consolidation would have been very limited because of that and he also testified that so consolidation so consolidation can excel rated by earthquake exacerbat damage now it's still fill consolidation that's causing damage but the cause is the earthquake now because it is not just natural focus automation when experts across examined the very careful to say what can be possible overwhelming evidence by not only experts previously retained by mr singh but obviously the experts retained by state farm that this house in fact sustain less earthquake damage than state farm actually paid for we were able in discovery to one cover photographs and other evidence that demonstrated that ninety percent of the damage to the driveway the damage to other areas was in fact long term earth movement damage we had pictures from prior to the earthquake this mr sting's own experts when i showed them the photographs said yeah that's the that's the damage i saw and that needs to be  that laundry room in the one nine hundred eighty s when she bought the house and was still in the house after the earthquake and yet there was no evidence of that linoleum floor it was damaged in any way and yet when they pulled it off they see a big crack in the concrete and a piece of wood all they didn't cite a single case in their opening brief they didn't argue this issue to the jury they didn't ask for a jury instruction on the subject so the first time we saw this that the case cite was in their reply brief so i think it's important to understand that this is a late comer but i have lots of points to discussed on this first of all there's the california case of community assisting recovery versus aegis which we cited in our brief for a completely different reason it's ninety two cal at fourth eighty six the court talks about the different than actual cash value with just a minute and and a replacement cost adjustment and specifically says that it's the this case the case cited by mr sloan for the proposition that we should have paid overhead and profit was salus and versus state farm and the court specifically said in sallust on that it doesn't support the position of the contractors overhead and profit should always be paid automatically included in the payment of the actual cash value and damages directly contrary to mr sunny's position as the case called snellen versus the state farm and that's at six seventy five that's tough one knows that more but let's get right to the heart of it mr sloan he said that this is very new and submitted evidence of what it would cost to repair and i commend the court to look at for instance exhibit three seventy nine page forty two fifty five which is an estimate mrs varian and got from pacific design for the repair of the driveway and the brick for twenty eight thousand six hundred seventy three dollars which included overhead and profit a lot of contractors fold their own into their estimate they don't set it out so you know how much they are making some contractors do some don't this estimate for twenty eight thousand six hundred seventy three dollars included overhead and profit state farm paid this is barren and forty two thousand dollars for that same item as shown in exhibit two fifteen at page forty one zero four mr senior went out after he bought the house in one thousand nine hundred six and got his own estimate for the replacement of that driveway lo and behold exhibit three ninety page forty to sixty five an estimate by d n m construction for the gripe way including the brick work with overhead and profit sixteen thousand four hundred sixty so we now the jury saw all th looks like his cross examination demonstrated that the damage he saw was in fact preexisting damage this argument about mr sting having a right to present mrs is quite incredible mr singh would have you believe that california law requires mrs varian and on her own son to have a written authorization and yet  some third party with no connection at all to mrs varian can come along and say we represent her state farm please talk to us quite an anomaly when the situation where we're state farm's to simply say ok we'll take your word for it mrs varian and would be the first one here i think you just violated my privacy right how dare you the insurance code seven ninety one one three precludes state farm from exchanging any information about a policy holder without an expressed written authorization from the policy holder tara barony and so not only was state farm required by the regs not to deal with mr soong they were required by other code provisions not to talk to him about her client and mr coo bhalla who is a public adjuster he knows the rules he knows the adjustors he's the one who was communicating to state farm on behalf of mr soong if anyone knows that he asked to have a written authorization it's mr kabbalah and just as they are simply re state farm they finally get an assignment from mrs varian and in writing when they threatened to sue her that was the only time and mrs varian testified is the trial about her unwillingness and her lack of authorization this was not a situation where state farm took advantage of anyone in fact we were compelled by law not to communicate with people other than sarah variant about her client would you please address investigating claims sufficient to what is followed under the policy that's the scope of the investigation there's nothing in the regulations or the law saying that you have to pull up this carpet or that carpet that you have to do anything other than make sure you do what's necessary to pay what you owe state farm absolutely did that in fact i'll have to say that to the extent state farm's investigation originally was it all inadequate it was inadequate only in its failure to uncover the hardly the time to go into discovery to try to find out the twenty year history of a property you go out there and you look and you pay what you think it's both i wasn't put there were ford forced separate payments from this with bernie well this is everyone acknowledged the state farm didn't have the sophistication to know how much the pool and the brickwork around the pool would cost and this is very dense that my son will go out and get an estimate for that and get back to you so to first visit again you're getting up over fifty thousand the second was simply that estimate that he had already promised to get so that was another i think thirteen fourteen thousand and then as part of the return visit to pay or to evaluate that additional estimate for the pool state parks said you know we didn't include enough for the brick work that surrounded this very elaborate driveway we're going to increase our estimate this wasn't a com them they weren't saying you didn't paste enough state farm notice this when it went out that second time and said we need to add something for this and they did that was that an admission was that number three or was that number two that was number three it was two and the fact in one visit so and then there was one very minor issue i think having to do with the maids bedroom it was about a six hundred dollars item for glass that had broken as a result and she submitted an simply that it took a couple of times to get estimates back from the policyholder who don't forget has the duty to present the client with the problem of runs and it wasn't and in fact mrs admitted that the policy required in order to get replacement cost that she actually replaced if you do the work she admitted that she didn't do the work she went out or not estimates for the driveway so you went out and got estimates for other things and she simply decided i just don't want to waste time with this i'm going to take my seventy thousand dollars and i'm going to sell the house and she did so and by the way the this very court in maryland casualty v night that ninety six third twelve eighty four specifically hell the policy requiring actual replacement to get replacement cost and demi was absolutely valid and the court in miers versus all state at nine never replaced she never disputed the amount and the reason she never disputed the amount was that the estimate she herself went out and got at the time were less than state farm paid her so it's no wonder that she would they conducted initial investigations to determine the amount of damage under their assessment they did not have to be insured law to determine the extent of the damage they undertook that responsibility when we did so and did not pay for the contractors overhead and the department of insurance which is a very significant issue because one of the results of the editorial rulings with respect to that as well as discovery or disrespected that effectively gutted the plaintiffs ability to