FEMA Litigation Success
If your business has suffered a flood damage, we might be able to help.
Flood insurance litigation is not victim friendly. That is a charitable way of putting it. It is actually downright hostile to the victims. Federal Emergency Management Agency—FEMA—enjoys sovereign immunity which shields it from just about everything—so FEMA refuses to pay where a private insurance would not dream of skipping on the bill. When the sovereign immunity defense does not work for FEMA, there is also federal preemption, strict compliance requirement, or just the plain old trick of “we do not insure what’s above the waterline.”
This is why winning a case against FEMA makes us particularly proud. Dr. Aylward undertook her first FEMA litigation as an unpaid personal matter, and was pleasantly surprised when she not only won against FEMA, but even won on an issue of a first impression—a legal point which had not been decided before. So we count among our victories making the FEMA law a little more victim friendly. And we asked the judge to emphasize in his opinion that FEMA cannot get away with insuring only "up to the waterline"—paying for only half of the wall that was damaged, or only for the legs of a couch if the water did not cover the entire the couch. The Federal Judge agreed. The news of our success appeared in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, LexisNexis Insurance Law Community and Carolina Paralegal News. We even received an honorable mention on the radio.
Flood insurance litigation is not victim friendly. That is a charitable way of putting it. It is actually downright hostile to the victims. Federal Emergency Management Agency—FEMA—enjoys sovereign immunity which shields it from just about everything—so FEMA refuses to pay where a private insurance would not dream of skipping on the bill. When the sovereign immunity defense does not work for FEMA, there is also federal preemption, strict compliance requirement, or just the plain old trick of “we do not insure what’s above the waterline.”
This is why winning a case against FEMA makes us particularly proud. Dr. Aylward undertook her first FEMA litigation as an unpaid personal matter, and was pleasantly surprised when she not only won against FEMA, but even won on an issue of a first impression—a legal point which had not been decided before. So we count among our victories making the FEMA law a little more victim friendly. And we asked the judge to emphasize in his opinion that FEMA cannot get away with insuring only "up to the waterline"—paying for only half of the wall that was damaged, or only for the legs of a couch if the water did not cover the entire the couch. The Federal Judge agreed. The news of our success appeared in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, LexisNexis Insurance Law Community and Carolina Paralegal News. We even received an honorable mention on the radio.