News & Events

Noelia Vaccaro, an attorney in the firm’s first party practice group, and Amy Klotz, an attorney in the firm’s appellate litigation support division, prevailed on a motion for summary judgment in a case involving the services of an engineer the insured retained after reporting the loss. They argued that the services the plaintiff performed were not covered under the policy because defendant did not constitute a cost to repair or replace the damaged property, as the plaintiff merely prepared a report that contained no narrative — i.e., no observations, analysis, conclusions, or recommendations — and, instead, consisted primarily of photographs.

The court agreed with the defendant and granted our motion pursuant to People’s Tr. Ins. Co. v. Kidwell Grp., LLC, 363 So. 3d 1108, 1110 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023), finding that no reasonable jury could find that the report was used to repair or place the damaged property. Although the plaintiff provided an affidavit of the Insured, in which the Insured stated that she received a copy of the engineering report and that it helped her determine what repairs needed to be made to bring the property to its pre-loss condition, the court found the affidavit lacking in substance and thus insufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the report, in fact, was used to repair or replace the damaged property.