Utility Claims: We settle a large amount of utility claims throughout the year. Because they are shared, utility poles can have 4 different claimants making demands at different times. We try to see every utility pole and identify who the different claimants will be and approximately how much their demands will total. This is important when dealing with basic property liability coverages to assure that there will be enough coverage to indemnify all of the claimants. If there is not, we notify the file to send out an excess letter and then contact all of the potential claimants to see if they will accept a pro-rata settlement and release the insured. Knowing the claim potential early-on benefits all and negates extra contractual liability. We have a large data base of already settled claims. We compare recent demands to prior settlements to pick up trends and assure that we are recommending settlements that are fair to both the claimants and the carriers. We have found that large demands can have large errors in both scope and pricing. Also utilities can take a long time to submit their demands. This adds to the clouding of the issue and makes a claim harder to quantify, especially from the desk. That is why we like to inspect as many of these claims as possible. Because we have a large basis for comparison we can isolate errors and demonstrate them to the claimants to obtain a more accurate indemnification settlement. We can more easily spot trends as well.
We collected this photo from the utility company showing the damaged pole being replaced on an emergency basis.
When we investigated this claim further we found that the utility had used a subcontractor and marked up their invoice to them heavily. We settled without the mark up.
New & old pole together. It is important to see what was done so that overlap of operations between utilities can be addressed.
This was a very complicated job involving an underground feeder as well as a pole. When the demand was audited there was a $16,000.00 accounting error found before any negotiations even started.
Evidence of underground work that was necessary.
We don't just do utility poles. This is a large pad mounted transformer that was damaged by a vehicle.
In this claim the utility had submitted a demand for over $9,000.00 for the replacement of this simple pole. When we asked them to investigate they found that they had charged the damager for the wrong job and withdrew the claim.
Again this was a very simple job for which the utility was charging a great deal for just a cable swap onto the new pole. See next photo.
We surveyed the area and found significant new cable work being performed close by. I asked the claimant to check to see if some of that labor had possibly gotten onto our claim in error. We settled for quite a bit less than the demand.
Replaced gas service.