Top Court hears arguments about whether insurance companies should pay for crumbling foundations
"You're asking the homeowner to play chicken with the collapse of their home,"
The court's decision on the matter will determine whether thousands of homeowners in
According to estimates by the state, as many as 34,000 homes in eastern and north central
Parker, a lawyer for homeowners Steven and
The couple is suing their insurance provider,
Parker cited a 1987 case, Beach v. Middlesex, where the Supreme Court ruled that if undefined by insurance companies, collapse is ambiguous enough in definition to include coverage for "any substantial impairment of the structural integrity of a building."
"The court was quite clear ... but the point of Beach I'd like to emphasize is that if the insurer wanted a different version of collapse, they had every right to redefine it. Liberty made no attempt to redefine it," Parker said.
An attorney for
"We're talking about houses that are standing and safe to live in," he said. "They may be standing for another 1,000 years."
Kole argued that the collapse of the home would need to be imminent for the damage to be covered by insurance policies. He said that a collapse needs to be sudden and imminent.
"There is no independent evidence of that," he said.
During the oral arguments, justices went back and forth with the lawyers on how exactly the court could define collapse.
"Are you saying that the minute you find this mineral in your foundation that you know you have a major problem?" he asked.
Robinson also pressed Parker on whether the presence of and the subsequent cracking of the foundation was a sure sign that a home would collapse.
"It may collapse, it may not collapse. It may last 50 years," Robinson said.
Justice
"What about a duty to mitigate?" she asked. "Wouldn't you argue that if a homeowner waited to do anything, they'd have a duty to mitigate the issue?"
Kole said that the damage would need to be severe enough to need mitigation for the homeowners to be responsible.
In addition to the Karas family's case, lawyers for a
Jemiola is suing her insurance provider, the
"Caving in has to be given a meaning that is separate from falling down," her attorney
A lawyer for the insurance company,
"The abrupt falling down has to render the house uninhabitable," he said. "There is nothing abrupt happening to these houses."
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