#110: How to Protect your Assets vs. Insurance Company Games

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Today we have Galen Hair is the owner of insurance Claim HQ. It is a property-casualty insurance attorney firm that operates in more than seven states. And what they do is they help families rebuild their homes and businesses. They've dedicated their practice to fighting for the rights of policyholders when they experience a loss, a lot of us don't realize that we actually have someone that can voice and help us. So, I think this will be extremely exciting in some good content.

Galen M. Hair is a persistent and aggressive litigator licensed and has clients from all over the world. He established a reputation for getting the job done both within and outside the courtroom early in his career, with substantial wins both at home and across the country and an excellent record of positive results. He focuses not only on the litigation in front of the client but the long-term personal and business effects that his clients' issues will cause.

In this episode, we’re discussing…

[4:54] Why are insurance claims not benefiting the consumer?

[10:18] What is insurance fraud

[14:38] How people can protect themselves from insurance fraud

[15:31] Why should you never let your mortgage company purchase your property insurance for you?

[18:44] What should we be reading in those policies (double-check)

[23:59] How often do we need to up the insurance coverage?

[26:25] Should we do an assignment of claim?

[28:40] How can we pick a good contractor?

[30:36] Can bosses consumers hire a public adjuster? And the benefit of doing this.

[33:58] How can our listeners find you?

Resources from Galen

+ Read the transcript

Mike Stohler

What if you could be doing something smarter with your money that creates income. Now, if you're wanting to get ahead financially, and enjoy greater freedom of choice, if you want a comfortable retirement, and you know you'll have more choices, if you can do more with your money. Now, if you've wondered who else is creating ways to make their money work for them, and you want actionable ideas, with honest pros and cons, and no fluff. Welcome to the richer geek podcast. We're here helping people find creative ways to build wealth and financial freedom. I'm Mike Stoller. And in this podcast, you'll hear from others who are already doing these things, and learn how you can too. All right, everybody, welcome back to the richer geek Podcast. Today we have Galen hair is the owner of insurance claim HQ. It is a property casualty casualty insurance attorney firm that operates more than seven states. And what they do is they help families rebuild their homes and businesses. They've dedicated their practice to fighting for the rights of policyholders when they experience a loss, you know, not a lot, you know, a lot of us don't realize that we actually have someone that can voice and help us. So I think this will be extremely exciting in some good content. Welcome Galen, how you doing?

Galen Hair
I'm great. How are you?

Mike Stohler
Doing? Great, you know, so let's dive into this. You know, you are one of the national top 100 trial lawyers. And you've been concentrating on helping people I guess, you know, with their claims is that you know, the best way to put it?

Galen Hair Yeah, so plaintiff lawyers are typically kind of, we think of personal injury lawyers, you know, ambulance chasers, if you want to use a negative term, what I explained is, we help hurt buildings, we don't help hurt people, if that makes sense.

Mike Stohler
Yeah, it does. Yeah. And it's, so I've got a lot of questions. You know, I have a lot of rental homes, and a lot of our listeners have rental homes or other things? Or is all insurance the same? You know, can we just do it? Should we go with some of the big names or some of the smaller ones? You know, is there kind of difference? Can we just, hey, you know, this is, you know, 100 bucks cheaper, you know, does it really matter?

Galen Hair
Yeah, there's a massive difference, right. And I think that's kind of the key point to make is that insurance is the weirdest thing. Because when you go buy a car, you think about a few things you do think about price 100%. But you also think about like, is this kind of the right thing for me? Is this the model I want? Is it going to be reliable? Do I trust my teenage son or daughter to drive it for the first time, right? There's all these things we think about whenever we're making a major purchase, how many people chose the first house they were going to live in purely based on price? And a lot of people here investigate, right? Or they invest? Sorry, not investigate. So one of the things you're doing is you're partially choosing it based on price, but you're choosing that home based or that property based on the ability to potentially realize a return. Insurance is the weirdest thing, because we don't do that. And I don't know why. But we don't, we tend to go to our agent and say, Hey, I need insurance. They ask us a couple of questions. Sometimes they don't even ask us all the questions on the piece of paper, they just make up the answers for us. And then they tell us, okay, I got three options. And we usually say I'll take the cheapest one, unless there's some massive reason for us to take something else, right. It's mind blowing. Because the whole concept is that insurance is supposed to protect your investment, whether that's your personal investment, your home, your business property, or whether that's investment property, it protects it, and you're choosing often the cheapest way out no matter what. So what you're getting often is an insurance company that may not have the best claim practices and insurance company that may be offering you kind of a slice and I call it a slice and dice policy, where it cuts out some of the most likely catastrophic losses in your region, all sorts of things. It's the weirdest concept when you think about it.

Mike Stohler
Yeah, well, that's That's true. You know, I think all of us you Don't want to read the ad pages of, you know, what the policies, you know, detail and you kind of hope that the the the broker, your agent knows what they're doing. But I mean, why can't we get these insurance claims to benefit the consumer? I mean, what's going on there? Why are they not benefiting the consumer?

Galen Hair
Well, we can get them to benefit the consumer and they're supposed to and when the system works really, really well. That can happen. And that often does happen. I don't want to make it sound like, that never happens. Okay. I do think I'm famous for saying this. But I'm, I'm trying to think of the right way to not get myself in trouble. A lot of my contemporaries buy into conspiracy theories really, really big time. Okay. I do not think executives from insurance companies are sitting in a boardroom, wringing their hands, trying to find a way to screw the policyholder, I don't think that's the case. But I do think that their profit driven businesses, right, you know, I was watching. I was watching the World Series at the beginning of the month. We don't, I'm from New Orleans, we don't really have a lot in baseball. And New Orleans typically hates people from Atlanta. But Atlanta is the closest to a decent baseball team we have so we watch them. So I'm watching the Braves win. And I'm watching these commercials, right. And they spent over a billion dollars of advertising a year, the insurance companies, they're trying to convince you, they're going to do a good job. But that doesn't mean that they'll never do a good job just because they have to invest money. So what you need to look at are kind of the general client satisfaction rates, how many complaints are filed in your state about claims handling, you have to also take into account how big the market share is right? It's a lot less impressive, if an insurance company only has a handful of complaints, if they have less than 1% of the market share. And actually might be a red flag, right? They write like, you know, they might write 30 policies in the state and had 10 complaints last year, that's a bad sign, right. But you got to take into account what they're doing. And all of that kind of plays back to some things that happened in the late 90s. With all state that have kind of changed the way claims handling work. But the process can work. All you have to remember is it's a contract between the parties. And just like, if you were in a business dispute with someone you were about to purchase a home from, you would not just take it when they tell you they're gonna screw you over. You don't want to take it when your insurance company tells you they're not going to treat you well, during your claim. It really should be no different. You're still talking about enforcing a contract.

Mike Stohler
Yeah, you know, I had something very similar in very recently, I'm still trying to go through it. We had, you know, I'm out here in Arizona, we have these wind storms, dust storms really big and blew off, you know, part of the roof, you know, some of the shingles. And insurance says, Well, you know, you have to do a repair. Instead of replacing the whole roof, you know, contractor goes up there and says no, I mean, you just can't do it. You can't repair it because of underlying damage and all this sort of stuff. And it's just back and forth thing. And so is that something, you know, where then it's like, hey, you know what I need to call Insurance Claim HQ.

Galen Hair
Absolutely. So, and I'll give you I'll give you a great example, a guy messaged me yesterday, and I know him in real life. And he messaged me, because I had mentioned, he told me what he got from the most recent hurricane that came through. And without seeing his house without knowing kind of what happened. I said, Look, if you have any damage to your roof, that number seems awfully low. It was below his deductible. And, and he sends me his estimate. And it's from a big carrier. And they have written to replace 19 shingles. Yeah, so I'm like, well, that's curious. Maybe it's all on one corner. Right. And and that's not even to get into whether you can replace 19 shingles anyway, so then I get the I get the actual photos. And I see that these 19 shingles are scattered throughout. And, you know, I think I think to myself, what are they recommending? They're recommending that he cut 19 holes in his roof, patch them up, and then somehow that's a new roof. And these are things that we don't take into account as a consumer, right things like can we match? Some states allow us to match some states don't but is this roof gonna match their damage to the decking underneath? Most people don't even know what decking is on a roof or you know, for for those of us at home that don't know what decking is that is the usually plywood that sits under your roof system that holds it all on? Well, common sense says when you put several 100 nail holes in it, it's a little bit weaker than it was before. So a lot of these insurance companies say why don't you put a few more 100 holes in it, and it'll be the same right? So there are a lot of things that insurance companies do that are part of kind of modern claims handling that fly in the face of common sense. And when you find your In a situation where something they're saying just doesn't truly resonate is accurate to you, you need to get someone like us or anyone really, to help you navigate this claims process, they have a lot more people than you do at your disposal. And if you are fighting them with your hand side behind your back, you're not going to win that fight.

Mike Stohler
Mm hmm. Yeah, it's amazing how many claims come in just under the deductible. It's amazing how that happens. I've had a few of those. So and let's talk about insurance fraud. What is it? You know, it is it. Now we all know, on the consumer side, you know, if I fraudulently tried to get something that didn't happen, but does it happen on the other side?

Galen Hair
It does, it happens on both sides. So the common definition of insurance fraud that we are all familiar with, is when you make a misrepresentation in submitting your claim or someone does that on your behalf. And that is insurance fraud. The very, very prototypical example and it does unfortunately happen a lot is Oh, yeah, you know, my house was broken into and things were stolen. So I lost my, you know, $500,000 diamond ring, and I lost my 17, full wall size TVs, and they're all brand new, I don't have any receipts for them, because they were all gifts, and I don't remember who gave them to me, right? That's kind of the tip. I'm over exaggerating. However, that's kind of the typical insurance fraud. However, there's what we call carrier side fraud as well. And any insurance fraud regardless of who's to blame for it, is defined as making a misrepresentation in the adjustment of a claim and intentional misrepresentation, we do accidentally say things wrong. If you ask me how old my refrigerator is, and I say six years, and it's eight years, I'm not committing fraud, unless I knew it was eight years and I intentionally deceived you. But carriers do this too. And it's really unfortunate. The way that we see it often come up is within years. For a long time, we saw engineers being retained and I hate having this discussion, because I love engineers. I was raised. I'm originally from Arlington, Texas. Engineers build bridges. They build cities, they make things work. They're they're great people in society. However, this whole cottage industry of insurance engineers kind of popped up. And they are they were hired to provide biased opinions that provided a quote unquote, scientific basis for a denial that the carrier had already predetermined. I was just opposing a very large carrier this morning. And at issue is hail damage to the roof. And sure enough, they hired an engineering firm that is notorious for providing opinions carriers want them to provide, who came out and spent 12 hours conducting an inspection that was solely designed to conclude that there was no hail damage to the roof. He had explanations for all the round holes on top of the roof. He even when when confronted with like absolute incontrovertible evidence, had to admit that there was hail damage there. But oh, I don't think it actually created any problems for the roofing system. And we do see that a lot. We saw that a ton during Hurricane Sandy up in the Northeast, where some of these engineering firms were copying and pasting reports without even taking into account the specific situations. I mean, one, one CEO of an engineering firm actually got arrested in Congress created a committee to reopen all of these Hurricane Sandy claims and reevaluate them. Nothing's ever happened on that scale in the United States before. But those same engineers that were doing that, and Hurricane Sandy had been working every major disaster since. So So we do see it on both sides. And you know, if you're making a claim, you need to make sure you're not committing fraud. But if you see fraud, it's not enough to just kind of say, hey, I want you to pay me because what you did is wrong, you should actually file a criminal complaint, you should get a lawyer involved. And you should find someone who understands what they're doing in a manner that's actually going to go assert you assert your rights for you, and call out fraud when it's seen if you if you just turn a blind eye to it, you're allowing this, you know, what you said is how do we make these things work at the very beginning, right? Yeah, I'll tell you how you don't make it work. You allow carrier side fraud to continue.

Mike Stohler
And you know, so you know, if I asked you how people can protect themselves from that insurance fraud, it is, number one, you're just identifying that this might be happening and then get counsel or just at least ask someone if they think it is right.

Galen Hair
Yeah, and you know, most people who do this type of work whether it's a public adjuster and attorney specializing on first party insurance claims, they will evaluate your claim for free typically, they'll even send someone often to get up on your roof and take a look. I say roof over and over because most claims are roof claims. I mean, I'll tell you this, if you have a fire claim and you weren't paid enough to fix their house, I don't need to look Get your house you've got to claim. But, but usually where the where the rubber meets the road in the real dispute exists is on hail claims and wind claims on roofs. But generally speaking, the premise of insurance is to indemnify you to your pre loss condition minus your deductible. So if you find yourself in a situation where after paying your deductible, you do not have enough money to properly and fairly fix your business, your home your investment property, you probably are in need of help.

Mike Stohler
Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. Now, choosing an insurance company, you know, I was reading part of your bio, you're saying that you should never, ever let your mortgage company purchase the insurance? For you? Yeah. Why is that?

Galen Hair
Yeah, it's the most gut wrenching thing. And we deal with it a few times a week here, because we do we do so much. So we run into it a lot more than other people. Often when you look at that policy that your insurance company buys for you. So what we're talking about now is force placed insurance, a lot of investors are familiar with the term. And in fact, I've been to some of these classes and sat in on some of these workshops where they say, just let the mortgage company get the force placed insurance. Well, that's a terrible idea for so many reasons. Number one, it's more expensive. If you go compare on the open market, what you can purchase from any of the insurance companies and compare what your mortgage company is going to charge you dollars to donuts 90% of the time, it's going to be higher. So just from an economic standpoint, it makes no sense, right? But some people say, Oh, I don't really want the hassle of keeping up with insurance, I don't care. And here's why. When you look at that policy, under named insured, it says the mortgage company, it doesn't say you. So now you're stuck with a messed up house, and your mortgage company wants you to fix it. And there's no money. And you think to yourself, well, this is great, because my mortgage company has a vested interest in seeing me fix, they don't care. You can look at past class actions against awkward and some of the others, where they receive commissions sometimes for purchasing this insurance. So they made their money on the front end a lot of the time, not all of them. And they have no real vested interest in helping you. So we see this all the time. It's called force place. In many states, the law actually says that you as the homeowner cannot assert rights under the insurance policy, because you are not a named insured. And that is gut wrenching, because that means if you are underpaid, and look, use hurricane Laura as an example, I can think of homes of force placed insurance that were underpaid, by as much as $200,000. And they have been kicked out of court already and told you have no rights whatsoever, because you were not the named insured under the policy. That's absolutely heartbreaking.

Mike Stohler
Right? I can't believe that they're even allowed to do that. Um, it's just,

Galen Hair
well, you know, the concept is this, right? Why does the mortgage company want you to have insurance to protect their investment? Right. So when they get forced place, it's for their benefit. When you get your own, it's for your benefit. But when they get force placed insurance, it's really for them, so they get to choose what they want to do.

Mike Stohler
Yeah, that's yeah. So ladies and gentlemen, don't do it. That's, that's, that's crazy. Wow. So let's, let's talk about some of the things you should look, you know, kind of like, you know, for better term, you know, property insurance one on one, you know, what are some of the things that you need to make sure it's in there. Double check, you know, you dot the i's, cross the T's? Talk to us a little bit about some of the things that we should be reading in those policies.

Galen Hair
Yeah, so it all comes down to what, how much? And how do we resolve, right? So the first thing is what's covered, and you want to look at your policy and make sure anything that normally could or would happen in that region is covered. If you are in California, you probably do not want a policy that excludes earthquakes and wildfires, if that if those are the two most likely things to happen to you. If you were in Louisiana, I do not know why you have a policy that excludes wind. I don't know. But lots of people do. Okay. So you have to kind of first thing you do is think what happens where where this property is located, write it all down. And then add to it the normal stuff, Fire, Wind, hail, like just the normal usual things. I'm not as worried if you have a terrorist exclusion because I don't know that that's particularly common anywhere. I'm not as worried if you have a bio chemical weapon exclusion, although these days I guess you never know. But, but generally speaking, you want to make sure the what is covered. You want to think what could happen to this property and is it covered? And you know, by the way, for those of you that do not read insurance policies all the time, it's really annoying the way they do it because they usually give you a policy that says everything covered. And then they attach an endorsement to the back that says, well actually delete this, this and this from that prior page, right. So make sure you actually read the whole thing. You're not going through a checklist, it's like it's not like when you see fire, you check off fire, no, read the whole thing. Make sure they're not taking it away at the end. They do that all the time through endorsements, it's obnoxious. And sometimes by the way, when you go to your agent, say, Send me your policy, they send you the policy without the endorsement. So make sure you have everything. And you can tell that from your declaration page. Because usually on your declaration page, there'll be a list of all the endorsements that should be attached and make sure they're all there. Okay. So that's the what. And then the next is the how much, you want to make sure you have enough coverage, that you can fix that property. Okay. And what I use is the match book test, if you set a match to the property and it burned to the ground, when you have enough money to fix the property, you have to look at two things. Availability of coverage, if you're talking about investment properties, you're probably not worried about contents, you're probably just worried about structure, you do need to have some liability coverage as well, because you could get sued. You might want some loss of use or law or lost rent coverage. But generally speaking, the big focus is going to be on your structure coverage and your other structure coverage. Other structures is like sheds and fences, and it's usually pretty small. But make sure if that property burned down, you could get it replaced, you have to look at that number on your deck page. And you have to look at coinsurance, okay? Coinsurance doesn't come up for everyone. But when it comes up, it also is heartbreaking. It has to do with making sure you have enough insurance based on the value of the property. If you use that matchbook test, it's going to be true, okay? And what I mean by that is coinsurance. For instance, when say if the property's worth a million dollars, and you only have 500,000. In insurance coverage, we're going to reduce whatever we do pay you by 50%. For instance, that might be an example. That's probably not going to happen if you got an insured for enough to rebuild the whole thing from beginning to end. So that how much will resolve itself. If you truly ask the question, what's it going to take to fix it? Okay? Don't think about a hailstorm think about a fire. If you think about a fire, you'll end up in the right place. And then finally, the the final thing is the how do we get there, right? In most states, there are laws that prohibit insurance companies from mandating arbitration from forcing you to file suit to sued for pretty much anything that prevents you from getting coverage. But that's not true for all states. And some carriers like Lloyd's of London, have traditionally been able to skirt those state's rules. These are the the fact that they're a foreign national. So and this is where I think the most misconduct from agents and brokers comes in, is they tend to do whatever is worse than a terrible job at explaining this to you. They go get you the lowest price policy they can and they don't explain well, this is a Lloyd's policy, and it's got a mandatory arbitration provision. And if you ever have a loss, you're going to end up having to go arbitrator in New York with people appointed by Lloyds. And you're not going to get to recover, right? Not all Lloyds policies are like that. But the point is, when that exists, it should be explained. So you want to then read through the process. And sometimes you need an attorney or a public adjuster to do that for them. And most of them will for free, by the way.

Because they want your business later, if you ever have a loss. So they're pretty, they're pretty fine telling you whether it's going to be a waste of their time, if you bring them something I will not touch most of those New York arbitration policies, because they're a waste of time. It's a one sided system. It's a rigged in favor of the carrier. And it's absolutely unfair that it's permitted in the first place. Right. So I'll probably look at that policy for you for free to figure out if I'm going to be wasting my time in the future. So find out but if you've resolved that, what, how much and how do we get there? That's kind of the insurance coverage one on one. Yeah.

Mike Stohler
And yeah, I think something else that, you know, maybe you can touch on is with the way that the home prices are going up, and construction is going up the cost of things? How often and I know that some people have had, you know, rental houses for five years, 10 years, they've never upped their coverage. Yeah, they review

Galen Hair
your coverage yearly, yearly. And I know that's a pain, right? What you really want to do in a perfect world, even though it's a little complicated is trying to get all your properties on the same schedule, right? That can be that can be a little complicated, but if you tell your agent or your broker which trying to do, sometimes they'll work with you on that. That way, it's just an annual exercise you go through the other reason you want to put them on the same schedule, if possible, is you want to be able to bid out because you might like your agent, you might like your broker, whoever it is, but you know, they're not the only game in town. And often what I find happens just because of the way agents are compensated, is these renewals are really fantastic for them because it's mailbox Money, right? It just renews and they make another commission and they move on. And then at some point, even when they retire, that becomes something that can be sold, right. So the older accounts tend not to get as maintained. So if you get your properties, especially if you have more than one, on the same schedule, you're kind of a bigger renewal package. And it really allows you to shop around to other people simultaneously. So I would say every year, you should be reviewing what coverage is out there. Because by the way, not just up in coverage, sometimes they take things out, like all the time, you will go buy an insurance policy, and then I'll see, you know, dealing with it right now with Hurricane Ida, people come out and say, Well, I don't have wind and hail. I'm like, Oh, when did that come out last year? Well, you've had the same agent for 16 years. Tell me how this played out? Well, I don't know. They just told me the last year they dropped the wind and hail coverage. And of course, no one called them to tell them right that that carrier just didn't want the risk anymore. Why? Because the Earth is kind of acting funny. And it's pretty likely there's going to be a hurricane. You know, their their, their their risk managers probably said, hey, we'd really don't want to have wind exposure in this region anymore. That's probably what happened in actuarial tables. So you really want to review your coverage yearly anyway, not just for number, you should absolutely up your coverage every year, to be fair, based on the guidelines we discussed, but you also want to review the actual policy and make sure that they're not proposing to take away coverage that you want it.

Mike Stohler
Yeah, you know, it's, it's kind of like in the commercial area, you know, we have hotels, and it was very quick to point out that we don't get loss of business loss of rents, due to bio, you know, COVID, you know, pandemics, you know, that was very quick to be put in, to make sure that all of us knew that we could not get loss of loss of income for those types of things. And if they were in there, they're definitely not in there anymore. Right. And so they're very savvy with saying that I, you know, we're not going to pay that stuff out anymore. So, when we have a claim, should we assign it? I'm just thinking, you know, should? Should we do an assignment of claim?

Galen Hair
Oh, to like, contractors, yeah,

Mike Stohler
you've contractors, and, you know,

Galen Hair
this is gonna get me skewered later. Business as a result, the short answer is probably not. If it's a general contractor that's capable of doing all the work you need, then I would say, yes, the problem is a lot of these assignments playing were with roofing companies, or emergency mitigation companies. And I'm not a big fan of that, because they're only focused on the work that they want to do. Right? So you assign the claim over to a mitigation company, they'll tell you, and they'll mean it, by the way, well, you can keep all the non mitigation parts of the claim. But meanwhile, they're documenting as much mitigation damage as they can to start every dollar of the claim out. And you might be short, the same thing can happen with your roof, right? So I'm not an assignment, a claim fan, unless it's a general contractor that you trust, that will restore the entire property. Yeah. And then what I do, and this is where I'm unpopular, is I tell the contractor, it's time to put up or shut up. If you want this assignment claim, I'll give it to you irrevocably. But you're going to go ahead and fix my property. And you're gonna deal with the payment side of everything, right? Yeah, do not sit on my claim, while you negotiate with the carrier for six months a year, while I have a messed up hotel, or a messed up house, or messed up, whatever. So you can make more money, it's your job to make the money. So fix the property and then worry about the money. Mm hmm.

Mike Stohler How do we pick a good contractor? What are some of the things we look

Galen Hair
at? First of all, you know, look, contractors are like lawyers or like investors, there's good ones, there's bad ones, and it just kind of depends. I think someone with a decent track record is good. Ideally, if they come from a personal referral, I like that a lot. I tend to look at the people that they bring on site, you can tell a big difference between the professionalism and the quality of people that come out on site and that means a lot to me. How how the management acts towards their towards their subordinates. That's also really really big. One of the things that kills you in contracting right is labor delays. And yes, you've got management or foreman or supervisors that do not have their act together and did not have the respect of the crews. The crews aren't going to show up consistently and you're going to have delays as the customer so so that's what I look for I don't necessarily look for the shiny is to pick up the shows up at my property after after damage. I look for someone that I really think is going to get the work done. And then I really think that's the the million dollar question. If you agree right now to start work and fix my property and get paid. I will give you all of the insurance proceeds. But first you have to demonstrate to me that you're going to do this work.

Mike Stohler
And then we can have on the back end if it takes longer than a certain amount of time they discount the work. just Yeah, except

Galen Hair
you don't really care, right? If the work gets done, the work gets done so so as long as they hit the ground running and they're moving quickly, it doesn't matter. So that's the other thing I guess I'd say is you want a contractor that's well funded enough that they're not going to see delays as a result of funding. Yeah, look, storm chasing and insurance work is really for the big boys. It should not be a new contractor. I mean, I was telling a roofing company and this is just roofs, not even full build backs, that they should not even show up to hurricane Ida if they did not have a 30 to $40 million dollar line of credit.

Mike Stohler
Interesting, very interesting. Can bosses consumers hire a public adjuster? Absolutely. And what's the benefit?

Galen Hair
Yeah, so I think a public adjuster is a good place to start. It's not the case in every state, but in most states, it is. Public Adjusters, typically, by virtue of their license, are authorized to negotiate with the carrier on your behalf and document the damages. It's a really good baby step in handling a claim. Okay, again, insurance companies are much better equipped than you are right to handle these claims. So by getting a public adjuster, if you get a good one, you're getting someone with experience that knows how these claims should be handled and can keep an eye on the claim from beginning to end. That public adjuster also if they're experienced, probably has one or more attorneys that they trust that work in this area that they can confidently recommend. However, public adjusters are just like contractors, or just like lawyers, or just like investors, right? There's good ones and bad ones and public adjusters get a lot, a lot of bad anecdotal stories, right, just because of the thing, the way they work. However, I would die probably handle a claim without a lawyer or a public adjuster. Candidly, and most people are not comfortable with the lawyer step. They feel like it's too aggressive right out of the gate. So if that was the case, I would definitely get a public adjuster on board.

Mike Stohler
I guess it might depend on whether it's a $5,000 roofer or a $20,000 roof, you know, whether or not the attorney would be worth, if I give them half of, you know, upfront, you know, I don't know how that works. But I guess for me, it would depend on the size of the claim, or should we just do it?

Galen Hair
Yeah, I think you should just do it. So I think you should have at a minimum of public adjuster on every claim. Now, attorneys in this area are a lot less expensive than you probably think because you're used to personal injury attorneys. The attorneys in this area charge a lot less prior to filing suit. So for instance, I have a lot of hotels, a lot of big commercial properties, and they just hired me, right after a loss before they even tell the insurance company about it. They call me up and say, can you get the loss reported the right way? Can you go get it documented? Can you make this claim? Can you handle this from beginning to end? Because I know that I'm not going to be happy with the first check anyway. So I would rather just have you steer this claim from beginning to end, and be able to take it to a lawsuit if you need to. So that's how we do a lot of our commercial work. Okay, and we've had a ton of success, homeowners are, and it also depends on the region of the country. Right. Homeowners are a little more reticent to hire a lawyer out of the gate. However, I think even those reticent homeowners, hey, I think they're wrong. But B I think they should hire a public adjuster. Because, again, you know, like, I was laughing at this guy that sent me the 19 shingles. So you know, he's convinced that he's right in the insurance company is right. It'll never be above my deductible. Why do you think it'll never be above your deductible, right? So I jumped on the phone with him. And after five to 10 minutes of talking, he's like, wow, I was underpaid by like, 30 or $40,000. And I said, Yeah, so we haven't even looked at your house yet. That's just based off of the damage that that particular carrier admits is there. So but you're so convinced you're right, and if he just hired a public adjuster right out of the gate, we wouldn't even be having these tough conversations a few months after a storm.

Mike Stohler
Well, it's been very interesting, Galen, I appreciate you coming on. How can our listeners find you?

Galen Hair
Yeah, we're on all the all the fun social medias, we're on Instagram, Facebook, I think we're even on Twitter. And obviously our website insurance claim hq.com

Mike Stohler
Perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, Galen here and I appreciate.

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ABOUT GALEN HAIR

Galen M. Hair, Owner of Insurance Claim HQ, is a property insurance attorney operating in more than seven states including Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia among others. Galen and his team have helped over 800 families rebuild their homes and businesses. He has been rated a Super Lawyers Rising Star and voted one of the National Trial Lawyers Top 100.

He’s an aggressive and relentless litigator, is licensed in multiple states, and boasts clients from around the world. With large wins both at home and across the country and an impressive record of favorable results, Mr. Hair gained a reputation for getting the job done both inside and outside the courtroom early on in his career.

He focuses not only on the litigation in front of the client but the long-term personal and business effects that his clients’ issues will cause. Viability is key and no small victory is worth it if the client is put in a more detrimental position. With both large firm and boutique firm experience, he combines a large firm comprehensive approach to a small firm low-cost model to achieve impressive results with the minimal financial expense. His clients are family to him and it shows.

Mr. Hair has been fortunate enough to have several clients enlist him in “bet the company” litigation and has been tasked with protecting clients’ assets during litigation. He enjoys nothing more than fighting for his clients and his uses his unique work ethic, his diverse background, and his courtroom skills to do just that.

Mr. Hair is involved in several community-based organizations including Access Louisiana and the 610 Stompers. When he is not fighting for clients or raising money for a good cause, he is focused on skills enrichment – often attending continuing education “just to brush up.”

This unwavering success to continual improvement has led him to be named as a Super Lawyer Rising Star, a Top Lawyer by New Orleans Magazine, the Pro Bono Publico Award and numerous other accolades.

Passive InvestmentsNichole StohlerMarch 23, 2022podcast, season 1