Other Rented House water damage

S

shadowglen

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Hi
My rented house (semi-detached) was water damaged by a bust pipe from next door. My insurance company assesssor seems reluctant to contact next door to claim compensation from them and recommends that I claim on my own rented house insurance. Is this normal practise?
 
As the cause of your claim is a burst pipe next door, the claim should be against their insurer. Claims should follow liability. Don't want to judge, but it sounds like your assessor is looking for an easy life! This claim will be on YOUR record if your insurer pays, and may affect your future insurance costs, and prospects for changing to alternative companies. Imo you should insist on the assessor contacting your neighbours underwriters, or if you know the neighbour, contact them and get the name of underwriter and contact them yourself. Insurers sometimes have arrangements between themselves where one company handles the claim, and the other pays. So it MIGHT be possible for your neighbours insurers to accept the report from your own companies assessor. This might simplify the process. But bear in mind, your neighbours insurers must accept liability before agreeing to this.
 
Thanks for the reply. I though as much as it didnt make any sense that I should bear the costs that are mounting up considering that it was not my fault
 
Is he an assessor that you hired? or an adjuster working on behalf of the insurance company?

If the insurance company involved believed there was a right of recovery they would pursue this.
 
She is working on behalf of our insurance company. According to her business card she is employed by a company that call themselves 'Insurance Claim Consultants'. Todate I have not got myself an independant assessor.
 
you claim against your OWN insurance. You are insured for this peril; you have had misfortune and you claim. Your insurers assess and issue a cheque.

If you wish to claim against your neighbour, then you must prove that he is legally liable for the incident. Perhaps he is not. Are you prepared to take him through the courts and perhaps lose? If you do lose, then as well as not getting any compensation, you will have to pay your own legal and other costs and more than likely, his as well.

As previous poster mentioned, if YOUR insurers feel that they have a case against your neighbour, then let them pursue.
 
Thanks for that. Does that mean that I just accept the excess clause - in this case 500 euros - and additionally have my premiums increased even though it is no fault of my own? By the way is it normal for my insurance company to inform me that it is claiming against my neighbours insurance?
 
Yes, your insurers will tell you, as it is YOU who will be giving evidence in Court, should it go that far.

For what it's worth and from what you have posted, I do not think that you have a case against your neighbour. If the pipe burst due to low temperatures recently experiences, how could landlord/owner/tenant have prevented it? what did they do wrong?
 
horusd said:
As the cause of your claim is a burst pipe next door, the claim should be against their insurer. Claims should follow liability. Don't want to judge, but it sounds like your assessor is looking for an easy life! This claim will be on YOUR record if your insurer pays, and may affect your future insurance costs, and prospects for changing to alternative companies. Imo you should insist on the assessor contacting your neighbours underwriters, or if you know the neighbour, contact them and get the name of underwriter and contact them yourself. Insurers sometimes have arrangements between themselves where one company handles the claim, and the other pays. So it MIGHT be possible for your neighbours insurers to accept the report from your own companies assessor. This might simplify the process. But bear in mind, your neighbours insurers must accept liability before agreeing to this.
Click to expand...

Im afraid that this is not correct. What Ravima has posted is correct ( as usual). The next door neighbour will only have a liability in the event that they have been negligent in giving rise to the damage. You must also prove negligence in order for a claim to succeed against them. If the leak was outside of their control, then I believe that you will have a huge difficulty in proving negligence. If you claim under your own policy for the damage, then your insurers will determine whether they will excercise their subrogation rights under your policy. I suspect that they will not. It would seem in this instance that you will have little option but to be at the loss of your excess.
 
Q1. What is the situation if the copper tank was stolen from house B next door (unoccupied) and there was a massive leak leading to serious damage to the property A (rental - unoccupied at the time) ?

Q2. What is the position if the house B next door was not insured in the above situation?

I am aware of such a horrendous situation in relation to a work colleague.

Marion
 
sorry OP. I stand corrected by Ravima & Claimsman on this legal point. Seems intuitively unfair tho that you are at a loss (excess etc) in this case. I wonder tho if your neighbours house has also suffered damage and if their insurers are involved in a claim? If the damage to your house is clearly and evidentially a result of that, is there a case for contacting them and attempting to get an ex-gratia payment? Even if they only cover the excess? Whilst you may not have a definite legal claim ( short of a potentially tricky court case to prove negiligence) it looks like you might have a strong moral one that a reasonable underwriter might accept. Others may have an opinion on this, but if it was me, I'd give it a shot. Why not discuss with your assessor/underwriter to see if there is any precedent for this ? You might be out of pocket for a phone-call, but you might gain something for all your trouble.
 
Marion said:
Q1. What is the situation if the copper tank was stolen from house B next door (unoccupied) and there was a massive leak leading to serious damage to the property A (rental - unoccupied at the time) ?

Q2. What is the position if the house B next door was not insured in the above situation?

I am aware of such a horrendous situation in relation to a work colleague.

Marion
Click to expand...

1/ If the rental property is unoccupied and is damaged by an escape of water from a fixed water apparatus or pipe from an adjoining property, then, whether the loss is covered will depend on how long the rental property A has been unoccupied. Most properties will stipulate that there will be no cover for water perils if the property is unoccupied for a stated period of time. In addition, underwriters may also take the view that the fact that the property was unoccupied should have been disclosed to them and had they been aware it was unoccupied, they would have limited cover to certain perils only. If the loss is not covered by the policy, then the only recourse open to the property A owner would be to take a civil action against the owner of the property B from where the damage originated. Again, as per earlier posts, negligence would have to be proven for the case to succeed.


2/ Whether house B is insured or not is of no significance or benefit to the owner of property A. The only possible difference is that if negligence was proven against the owner of property B, then their insurers would deal with the costs under the public liability section of the policy and the owner of property A would have a better chance of getting compensated in the event that an award was made. However, this is a moot point insofar as negligence in my opinion would likely be extremely difficult, if not impossible to prove against the owner of property B.
 
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