What's the Scenario? with PLRB

Mungle's Crackers manufactures crackers shaped like exotic land and sea animals, among other food products. Apparently there was a bad batch of their latest line of Platy-Pies, because reports of moldy bags of pastries covered their social media and they had to recall many bags of the high-fructose treats. One angry customer got ill after his snack and has already filed a lawsuit against the compa...

An adjuster is assigned a property loss claim. The insured's house is in South Zanesville, Ohio on Cinema Drive, and they experienced hail damage to a portion of their roof on June 16. Their homeowners policy was only recently purchased on June 1 of this year. This claim brings up a number of questions, and luckily the adjuster is an employee of a PLRB member company, so they log on to PLRB.org. W...

Homeowner is relaxing one night, and all of the sudden there was a huge clap of thunder. It was so loud she thought it might have hit the house or somewhere in the yard … but everything looked ok. Six weeks later she got her normal water bill in the mail (billed quarterly), and to her surprise, it was outrageously high – $4,500. She knew she wasn't taking that many showers and thought there must b...

So the insured, being the diligent car owner and maintenance-oriented person that he is, appears at his auto shop for a routine oil change. However, the insured auto shop failed to adequately tighten the oil drain plug, causing all of the installed oil to leak out. According to the insured, this was a routine oil change, performed every six months, and there must have been a mistake in the drain p...

A man lived in his house with his girlfriend at the time. Things were going so well, he bought an engagement ring, took her to Mexico for vacation, proposed in Cancun, and she said yes. He gave her the ring. She wore it the rest of the vacation, then packed it in her suitcase … but when she got home and opened up the suitcase, it was gone! The girlfriend had no HO or renters insurance because she...

A 90 year old red maple hangs over the insured's house. One of the branches looks like it might fall, and if it does, it's going to cause some major damage to the sun room. The insured knows this and is a diligent homeowner. One day the weather forecaster says major storms are coming through later in the week – wind and flooding are likely – so the insured hires a tree company to remove the limb s...

Old brick mansion in New Jersey with a fireplace that the insured uses in the winter. During a routine cleaning, the chimney sweep noticed some cracking in the chimney bricks. He says (1) it's probably due to age and normal use because over time the heat from the fires takes a toll; he says (2) in his estimation the cracking has existed for 3+ years.    Notable Timestamps [ 00:15 ] - He encourages...

The insured is a charitable organization. Times were tough; fundraising was stagnant. The insured was looking to save money, so they asked if they could lower their premiums by canceling their hurricane coverage. The underwriters agreed, and drafted a 1-page endorsement with an exclusion for named storms. Sure enough, the insured got hit with a hurricane the very next month. They submitted a claim...

Homeowner was an elderly widow in Texas who was not keen on moving into a retirement home, so she continued to live in her house by herself. As she got older, a lot of normal maintenance started to get ignored, including the roof – The shingles were old and looked like they were about to fall off any day. One day a windstorm came through the area, and sure enough, 20-30 shingles blew off. She call...

At a store, a female patron wanting to try on clothing secured the dressing area with a curtain. Another patron, the insured, engaged in allegedly assaultive conduct by rummaging, feeling, and grabbing the curtain in an attempt to make physical contact with the female patron. The insured also knelt down and used his phone to take videos or photos of the patron under the curtain. Notable Timestamps...

Your friend clicked on a link in a questionable email. Now her computer is locked with a message saying it will unlock if she makes a bitcoin ransom payment. This is causing two problems for her: (1) Her computer doesn't work now, and (2) She had 10 years worth of family photo albums stored on the hard drive, with no cloud backup.  Notable Timestamps [ 00:15 ] - Today's scenario involves ransomwar...

A young couple lives together in St. Pete, Florida. Their friend was vacationing in Italy for a month and asked them to dog sit for her 3 year old pit bull rescue, who had a checkered past but was doing well lately. The couple took in the dog, and one night they threw a dinner party. Out of nowhere, the dog attacked one of the guests, biting him in the leg. In the resulting chaos, blood got all ov...

A derecho swept through Iowa damaging the insured's siding, and it's going to require a complete removal and replacement of the siding. The contractor informed the adjuster that the siding contains asbestos. It wasn't disturbed by the windstorm and is safe now, but it will be disturbed when it's removed, so that's going to have to be done by specially-licensed professionals with hazmat suits accor...

The insured bought a house in Oregon and took out insurance under a 2011 ISO HO3. He lived there for a month, but then moved back to California and started renting out the Oregon house to a local couple. Six months later, the couple disappeared with no trace and the house had been trashed. Walls were dirty; carpet was dirty; graffiti in the bathroom, hole in the bedroom wall; bottles and cans ever...

The insured's house in Rhode Island was destroyed in hurricane winds. The insured is a natural handyman (although his day job is an accountant), and he decided to rebuild the house himself from scratch, working diligently nights and weekends. Since he has a talent for this, materials & labor only ended up costing him less than the replacement cost estimate but more than ACV. Is he owed ACV, RC, ac...

The insured is a homeowner in Oregon. There were wildfires in the forests around his neighborhood, but the fire never got closer than 3 miles from his house, so he never had to evacuate. Nevertheless, the smoke was thick in his area, and enough of it penetrated into the inside of the house to leave a faint but noticeable smoky odor that does not seem to be going away. The insured is requesting smo...

The insured, a father of 4, was out buying Christmas gifts for his children. This year he decided to splurge and buy each of them a drone and an Apple Watch. On his way back home, he stopped to get gas, and when he went into the minimart for coffee, a thief stole everything out of the back seat. The insured notified the police and submitted a claim under his ISO 1991-edition HO3. The adjuster cons...

Your friend Joan was growing 3 cannabis plants in her home in Hawaii, intended as medical marijuana. Just as the mature plants were almost ready for harvest, the heat lamp malfunctioned and caused the crop to burn in a small fire. Joan submitted a claim under her HO policy, and wants to know if coverage is available. Notable Timestamps [ 00:16 ] - Joan's plants were valued at $2,000 each, and she...

[Recorded LIVE at the 2024 Claims Conference in Boston, MA!] The two head pastors of a megachurch had a falling out. One pastor left to start his own ministry, but just before he did, he changed the megachurch's Facebook password. He now has exclusive control of the account and sole access to the 100k+ followers, so the church filed a theft claim with its first-party insurer. Is this a direct phys...

An insured's detached garage burns down in a covered lightning strike, and somehow it's not covered just because of a little side hustle? The PLRB crew hunt for coverage and find what the insurer can pay out on when an insured rents out their property without updating their insurance company.   Notable Timestamps   [ 00:17 ] - The insured remodeled their detached garage for use as an AirBNB rental...

Is a recycle bin a "vehicle"? Does a car antenna ripping a coat fall under the Vehicles peril? How about a poorly secured wedding dress in the backseat of a convertible? If you occasionally win a biking competition, does the loss of your bike trigger business property coverage? Join Mike, Tim, and Alissha for the lightning round and discuss bikes, eBikes, sleds, boats, and more.   Notable Timestam...

It's a very common coverage question: does the insurance company really need to pay to replaced undamaged materials just because the replacement for the damaged materials doesn't quite match? Alissha, Mike and Tim bring this highly visual subject to an audio-only medium with concrete tips on bringing objectivity and expertise to a subjective issue.   Notable Timestamps   [ 00:19 ] - Just one of th...

In this episode, Mike, Alissha, and Tim answer everything you've ever wanted to know about bees, as long as you wanted to know if damage by bees was covered under homeowners insurance, if honey seeping through the walls is considered an ensuing loss, whether honey can be considered a "secretion," and if bees should be considered "birds."   Notable Timestamps   [ 00:27 ] -  Honeybees have infested...

NFTs may not be fungible, but they are transferable, and they are sometimes stolen with no traditional recourse. The PLRB crew discuss Bored Apes, acronyms, whether pixels are physical, and whether the internet is just a fad. Coverage topics include direct physical loss, special limits of liability, Property Not Covered, and more.   Notable Timestamps   [ 00:38 ] - An erstwhile member of the Bored...

Is there an exclusion for stupid? Join Alissha, Mike, and Tim to discuss bad decisions, wedding rings stuck on fingers, dumpster fires, and whether the choice to set off a firework inside a house is considered "intentional" under the policy.   Notable Timestamps   [ 00:17 ] - The insured's son set off a firework in the house for the excitement, causing fire damage. The homeowners file a property c...