A quick blog posts for those residents of Florida who have been enjoying state-enabled discounts for storm-preparedness: get them while you can as they might not be around much longer.
“What we’re giving them now is not right,” Apopka State Representative Bryan Nelson (R) said.
Nelson is both a lawmaker and an insurance agent. He said those discounts need to be cut so inland homeowners can stop subsidizing premiums for coastal homeowners.
The Wall Street Journal reports that government officials will be visiting China to investigate drywall manufacturing sites to better understand the problem occurring in homes across the United States. The report states
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission officials have received approval to visit several sites in China later this month to investigate problems with imported drywall that was manufactured there, the agency said today.
Agency officials also have started indoor air sampling in 50 homes and visited a synthetic drywall manufacturing plant in Florida as part of their investigation, the agency said in a status update report posted on its Web site. Chinese officials earlier accompanied U.S. officials in visits to some affected homes in Florida and Louisiana.
It looks like the MDL proceedings dealing with Chinese drywall will be moving along quite quickly, or is at least planned to be according to the judge in charge. Meeting with attorneys, with attorney Jeffrey Berniard in attendance, Judge Fallon notified both sides that the litigation would be moving forward and that he hoped to even have cases beginning just after the new year.
The Herald Tribune reports
Judge Eldon E. Fallon, who plans to begin “bellwether” trials in January, told both sides during a status conference in New Orleans on Tuesday that he expected discovery to begin in a few weeks.
Reported late last week, State Farm Florida is looking to shore up its finances and reduce discounts for customers… at the expense of those very customers. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports
Trying to shore up its finances, State Farm Florida will eliminate or reduce some insurance discounts it offers to homeowners — leading to an average premium increase of 28.4 percent.
The move, which comes as State Farm prepares to pull out of Florida’s property-insurance market, will have widely varying effects on policyholders because they qualify for different levels of discounts.
Perhaps one of the saddest recent stories coming out of the Chinese drywall disaster is the following, where the poor and elderly have been kicked out of their homes as a result of the buildings being built with the faulty wallboard. The News Inferno reports
Dozens of low-income elderly people are being evicted from a Florida apartment complex because of Chinese drywall and mold. According to naplesnews.com, the 33 residents have been given until the end of this month to leave the 30-unit Bromelia Place apartment building in Immokalee.
Many of the residents have been complaining of respiratory ailments. Other problems reported may be related to potentially-defective Chinese drywall, naplesnews.com said. The complex was only opened in 2007.
Beginning with the unfortunately typical story of a family looking for a new home to raise their family, the Wall Street Journal’s poignant piece on the uphill battle faced by families dealing with Chinese drywall brings more attention to the unfortunate situation. The piece opens
Shortly after buying their home in Cape Coral, Fla., in 2006, Keith and Denise Cramer noticed a peculiar acidic smell they thought was wet paint. The odor never left.
There were other strange occurrences. Chrome-plated faucets and showerheads became pitted or turned black. The central air-conditioning unit faltered and failed. Their baby son, Gavin, suffered frequent ear and upper respiratory infections, and Gavin and Denise got rashes.
Just a reminder to Louisiana residents that Friday and Saturday are sales tax holidays, where “eligible items will be exempt from the state’s 4 percent sales tax, though parish and municipal taxes will still apply.” The Daily Advertiser reports
Because the savings are greatest on big-ticket items, furniture and electronics retailers tend to promote the holiday the heaviest, often tacking on their own specials as an added incentive.
Elliott said that when the program started, she and some retailers were doubtful that a 4 percent savings would attract buyers, but it did.
The MDL has decided on the steering committees for the Chinese drywall lawsuit and while they did not include the Berniard Law Firm, our firm is in a key position to be highly involved as pretrial motions go on in the city of New Orleans. U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon appointed 14 different attorneys from across the country to deal with the defective sheetrock and pretrial motions will be handled in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Judge Fallon will coordinate pretrial litigation and discovery, and, upon completion, all filings will return to their original jurisdictions for trial.
For more information about the MDL or Chinese drywall, please consult the section of our blog dedicated to this serious topic by clicking here.
A story coming out of Coral Gables, FL, demonstrates it’s not just the everyday homeowner who has been struck by Chinese drywall. Even builders have constructed homes for themselves unwittingly with the faulty wallboard. With timelines unclear in regards to when progress will develop, this builder decided not to wait any longer and gutted the 2,300 square foot home as soon as the sulfuric smell wafted into the air.
[quote]
…waiting could just make the problem worse, said Frank Mackle, a home builder who recently discovered his own house has the problem product.
A quick news blurb regarding a topic we brought up earlier: the nearing expiration of the National Flood Insurance Program. Such an expiration has been delayed another six months as the House agreed to extend the program through the 2009 hurricane season:
Set to expire on Sept. 30, the House approved a six-month extension to March 31, 2010. The Senate and president must approve the extension.
The NFIP bill (HR 3139) was sponsored by House Financial Services Housing Subcommittee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D.-Calif.) and committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).
Insurance Dispute Lawyer Blog