Comments

Comments by Julie Tripp from United Kingdom on Thursday, June 08, 2006 at 09:36

I think you'll find that, if you actually read Judge Senter's opinions denying Insurers' Motions to Dismiss in both the Buente and Tuepker actions, you'll see that in both cases he said EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Both the Allstate and State Farm policies contain "valid and enforecable" flood exclusions (see p8 of Buente and p6 of Tuepker). In addition, neither company can rely on its so-called "weather exclusion", which attempts to exclude any loss from, e.g. windstorm if accompanied by water. Under Mississippi law coverage is only excluded if the water damage occurred BEFORE the wind damage, not after (as the exclusion attempts to do).
In both cases Plaintiffs - not Insurers - must prove that the wind damage occurred prior to damge caused by storm surge in order to be successful. Tuepker in fact follows Judge Senter's opinion given when dismissing Plaintiff's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment in Buente, where the Judge held that the claim could not be summarily dismissed as "the water that entered and damaged the plaintiffs' home was tidal water, I find that the damage caused by this inundation is excluded from coverage under the Allstate policy". In Tuepker Judge Senter states (again on p6) "Losses directly attributable to water in the form of a 'storm surge' are excluded from coverage because this damage was caused by tthe inundation of plaintiffs' home by tidal water from the Mississippi Sound driven ashore during Hurricane Katrina."
I would suggest you actually read the cases you report on, rather than relying on others' erroneous accounts...