Landlords and commercial property owners need insurance to protect them against civil lawsuits and preserve their business interests. They also need property insurance to ensure that if disaster strikes, they will have the financial resources they need to repair the damage and recover.
Unfortunately, insurers often have a different idea of what their obligations really are.
At Goldstein, Gellman, Melbostad, Harris & McSparran, we help landlords and commercial property owners throughout Northern California obtain the insurance benefits they have paid for. To learn about your rights and what our lawyers can do to protect them, call us at 415.673.5600 or send an e-mail containing a brief description of your situation and concerns. We represent clients with property insurance coverage disputes and claims throughout Northern California, San Francisco, Marin, Walnut Creek, Oakland and San Jose.
Our Practice
Historically, attorneys at our firm have done a great deal of work involving commercial real estate, landlords’ issues and the policyholder side of insurance law. Together, these experiences have made our firm well suited to deal with property insurance disputes on behalf of landlords and commercial property owners alike.
Common disputes we have seen in our practice over the years involve the following issues:
- Valuation of damages: Insurers will often come up with loss calculations that differ wildly from the property damage estimates of their insureds. Our attorneys will fight to obtain the full value of the damage to your business and property.
- Broker/agent negligence: Whether it happened because of a mistake or through intentional misrepresentation, property owners sometimes discover that the insurance policy they purchased is not what they thought.
- Exclusions and exceptions: Exclusions, riders and exceptions can be the Achilles heel of an otherwise perfectly good insurance policy. However, these “escape clauses” written into the policy by insurers are often poorly worded, overly broad and susceptible to challenges on those grounds.
- Failure to defend: Insurance companies generally have a duty to defend property owners against property-related personal injury lawsuits. Failure to defend is a form of insurance bad faith.
Call us at 415.673.5600 or contact our San Francisco offices online to arrange for an initial consultation.
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