Insurance companies hate to pay Kelly Kubiak’s clients because she is such a tough advocate for policyholders. Overhead and profit issues may be an interesting academic issue for insurance nerds, but Kelly Kubiak and her friends took the cause all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. Ask Kelly and her friends what it means to get full benefits, even overhead and profit benefits, for policyholders wrongly denied coverage, and you will find a bunch of happy policyholders.
The bottom line ruling is an insurer’s required payment under a replacement cost policy includes overhead and profit when an insured is reasonably likely to need a general contractor for the repairs. The insured would be required to pay costs for a general contractor’s overhead and profit for the completion of repairs in the same way the insured would have to pay other replacement costs he or she was reasonably likely to incur in repairing the property.
The opinion is a lot more complicated. The result is not--insurers should pay and not withhold overhead and profit expenses.
Kelly Kubiak, of Merlin Law Group, and her friends, Tom Elligett, Amy Farrior, and especially Adrian Neiman Arkin and Timothy H. Crutchfield for United Policyholders have much to celebrate.
Actions mean more than words, and they never gave up seeking justice. In the warm summer air, I think many of us think about what we are doing and whether we are helping our brothers and sisters. Kelly and her friends know they helped others.
I wonder if people who work for insurance companies think they are helping others with their talents or just making a living. An honest answer brings a blue feeling, which leads me to a summer blues and song: