Burst Pipe Claims — Attorney for Insurance Claims

Burst pipe claims are a special category of water loss claim. Many Oregon homes, in particular those located in parts of the state that historically enjoyed mild winters, were not designed or built to handle extremes of cold temperature. As a consequence, as climate changes and our winters become less predictable, Oregon homeowners are more and more frequently experiencing frozen pipes when a cold snap hits. And more and more frequently, frozen pipes are resulting in burst pipes. We can help you navigate an insurance claim dispute if this happens as your insurance litigation attorney.

A burst pipe loss can be particularly troublesome for a number of reasons. Because they result from significant freezing temperatures, all too often the conditions that cause burst pipes also cause loss of power to the home, driving homeowners to seek lodging elsewhere until power is restored. The pipes may then fail during the subsequent thaw, but before the homeowners’ return, such that burst pipes may continuously release massive amounts of water into the home for hours or days, undetected while the homeowners shelter elsewhere. Moreover, if one homeowner experiences burst pipes it is a safe bet that others nearby will have done so as well, such that burst pipes often come with a built-in shortage of plumbers with the capacity to handle numerous simultaneous emergency calls from desperate homeowners. Finally, even if only one pipe actually bursts in connection with a given freezing spell, the pressures caused by the expansion of freezing water may have weakened many or all pipes in a home, creating the potential for a massive failure of the plumbing system down the line.

Insurance companies often make a grave problem worse in the aftermath of a burst pipe. A homeowner’s plumber may advise that all of the pipes in a home have been compromised and that the safe and cost-effective solution is to re-pipe the whole home and replace all of the existing lines with cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) piping. But the insurer may nevertheless refuse to pay to replace any piping that has not been proven damaged, forcing the plumber to fix one length of failed pipe at a time, only locating the next damaged pipe in the sequence after restoring water to the system reveals the next point of failure by pumping yet more water into the home and compounding the risk of further water damage and mold. This can constitute a risk to the household’s health and can double the cost of necessary repairs.

The challenges of determining the scope of necessary repairs, mitigating the risk of further water loss, remediating water loss that has already occurred, and obtaining the insurance company’s compliance with its duty to indemnify the loss can be a minefield of traps and pitfalls. An experienced attorney for insurance claims can help homeowners navigate those challenges safely.