ClaimIntercept™ is a concept developed by the inspection industry legal icon, Joe Ferry, for interdicting unmeritorious professional liability claims against home inspectors insured by Elite InspectInsure before they blossom into lawsuits.
The program was developed by Joe after he became aware, in his capacity as General Counsel to InterNACHI, of the torrent of professional liability claims against home inspectors that had no underlying factual support.
The seminal case that Joe interdicted involved a home inspection that had been conducted in February 2005 in Southwest Florida. The claim did not surface until twenty-two months after the inspection and sought compensation for defects that the inspection had actually uncovered and that the inspector had noted in his inspection report. Joe's responsive letter to the claimant's attorney on the home inspector's behalf in that case [which can be read here] was a locus classicus of the kind of moral outrage anyone would feel for the victim of an injustice.
As a trial lawyer with over 20 years of experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of civil litigation, Joe was astonished to discover the sheer number of claims being brought that were eminently defensible but which the industry's E & O insurance providers were routinely validating with a claims approach that actually encourages the filing of unmeritorious claims.
Shortly after Joe's letter succeeded in defeating the Florida case, Joe developed his acclaimed Law and Disorder seminar wherein he teaches home inspectors his tried and true methods for reducing their exposure to professional liability lawsuits. A complete list of upcoming seminars can be found here. Inspectors who had attended the seminar began to contact Joe for help when they were presented with similar unmeritorious claims.
Following Joe's extraordinary success in derailing and defeating unmeritorious claims before they blossomed into full blown lawsuits, the claims departments of two of the largest insurers who provide E & O insurance coverage to the home inspection industry began to take notice. Subsequently they agreed not only to allow Joe to intervene whenever a home inspector insured under the Elite InspectInsure E & O insurance programs received a preliminary notice of a potential claim from either a claimant or a claimant's attorney, but also to allow the home inspector to credit Joe's fee for the intervention against his deductible, a win/win situation for the home inspector.
Here is how ClaimIntercept™ works in actual practice. When an insured receives a notice of a potential claim, he reports it to Elite InspectInsure. Elite InspectInsure forwards the claim to Joe for a determination of merit. After consulting with the insured home inspector and reviewing the case documents, including the demand letter, the inspector's pre-inspection agreement and the inspection report, Joe will make an informed judgment, based on his vast trial experience and surpassing knowledge of the home inspection industry, as to the validity of the claim.
If Joe determines that the claim is not valid, with the insured's consent, he will respond to the claimant or the claimant's attorney on the insured's behalf, explaining the legal and factual reasons why the claim will not succeed. In every case, eighteen of eighteen, where Joe has determined the claim to be unmeritorious and he has intervened, the claim was dropped by the claimant following Joe's intervention. That astonishing record is indicative of both the sheer number of invalid claims that are made against home inspectors and Joe's consummate powers of persuasion.
