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Florida Water Damage Lawyer
It starts as a sound you cannot place. Then the laminate floor feels soft near the refrigerator line, the baseboard paint bubbles, and by the time a plumber opens the wall there is water damage that clearly did not happen yesterday. Your carrier’s adjuster will have one main question, and your whole claim turns on the answer: when did this actually start?
I am Louis P. Meyer, Esq., a Senior Attorney at Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A. in Tampa. My practice focuses on Florida property damage claims, and water losses are the most common claim I see and
the most commonly underpaid. The difference between a covered water claim and a denied one is usually a handful of words buried in the policy. This page explains those words before you have to argue about them.
What this practice covers
Water damage comes from plumbing leaks, burst pipes, water heater failures, appliance supply lines, air conditioning drain lines, and roof leaks that let rain in. A standard homeowners policy generally responds to water that escapes suddenly and accidentally from a plumbing or appliance system. It generally does not respond to flooding from outside, which belongs to a separate flood policy, and it usually excludes damage from leaks that went on for weeks or months.
I handle water damage claims across Florida: burst pipes, slow leaks discovered late, appliance failures, water heater ruptures, and the mold that follows when a wet home is not dried properly. The legal work includes coverage analysis of the exclusion language, fights over mitigation and dry out bills, examinations under oath, sworn proofs of loss, and the presuit process Florida law requires before suit. Before suit, Fla. Stat. § 627.70152 requires a presuit notice that gives the carrier a chance to inspect and respond.
Sudden and accidental versus the slow leak exclusion
Read a Florida denial letter for a water claim and you will meet the same sentence in most of them: the policy excludes water damage occurring over a period of time. Many Florida policies now say it outright, excluding damage from a leak that continued for fourteen days or more, whether the homeowner knew about it or not. The carrier’s logic is simple: a burst pipe is an accident, and a leak that ran behind a wall for a month is a maintenance failure. The fight is over the calendar, and the carrier builds its calendar out of your own evidence: water bills, staining patterns, the condition of the wood, and anything you said about when you first noticed something.
The second trap is smaller print: the water damage sublimit. Many Florida policies cap water damage coverage, commonly at $10,000, unless the homeowner bought the limit up. A family learns this after the dry out company and the plumber have already done the work. The third trap is mitigation. Your policy requires you to protect the property after a loss: shut the water off, call the plumber, dry the structure. But the carrier will still audit every mitigation invoice and refuse part of the bill. Doing nothing is a policy violation. Doing everything gets second guessed. Documentation is what makes either decision defensible.
How I approach this work
I start with the policy language, because water claims are won and lost on definitions: what counts as sudden, when the exclusion clock started, and whether the sublimit even applies to your kind of loss. Then I build the timeline from evidence instead of memory: plumber reports, water bills, photographs, and mitigation records. Under Fla. Stat. § 627.70131, a carrier generally must pay or deny a residential property claim within sixty days after it receives notice. You will get a straight answer from me about which parts of your loss the policy covers and which parts it honestly does not.
Questions Florida homeowners ask about water damage claims
My leak was hidden inside a wall. How can the carrier call it long term?
Because the exclusion usually turns on how long the leak existed, not on when you discovered it. Carriers use physical evidence, staining, rot, mold growth, and material condition, to date a leak backward. That is why the plumber’s findings and early photographs matter so much: they are the evidence on the other side of that argument.
What is the fourteen day leak language I keep hearing about?
Many Florida policies exclude water damage that results from a leak occurring over a period of fourteen days or more. If the carrier proves the leak ran at least that long, it will deny the ensuing damage even if the leak began suddenly. Other parts of the loss, like the cost to access and repair the pipe itself, can have separate treatment under the policy, which is one reason these claims need a line by line read.
The carrier capped my payment at $10,000. Is that legal?
Often, yes. Many Florida policies carry a water damage limitation that caps payment for water losses unless the homeowner purchased higher limits. Whether the cap applies depends on the kind of water event and the exact policy wording. A burst pipe claim and a roof leak claim can be treated differently under the same roof, literally.
Do I have to let the carrier’s preferred vendor dry out my home?
Your duty is to mitigate: stop the water and prevent further damage. Some policies steer you toward carrier managed repair programs, and the choice can affect how the claim is scoped and paid. What matters most is that the drying is done promptly and documented: moisture readings, equipment logs, and invoices. Keep copies of everything the vendor gives you.
The water is stopped and the house is dry. Why is mold now part of my claim?
Because water that sits in wall cavities and under flooring feeds mold, and mold that follows a covered water event is often part of the same loss, subject to its own sublimit in many policies. Whether mold remediation gets paid usually traces back to whether the underlying water event was covered, which is another reason the first claim has to be built correctly.
My claim was denied as wear and tear. Is a denied water claim the end of the road?
No. A denial letter is the carrier’s position, not a court ruling. Denials based on long term leakage, wear and tear, or late notice all rest on facts that can be tested against the policy and the evidence. Under Fla. Stat. § 627.70152, suit over a property claim starts with a presuit notice, and many claims that begin with a denial end with a payment once the record is complete.
The bottom line
Water claims are decided by definitions most homeowners never read and a timeline most homeowners never thought to build. The carrier reads both, starting on day one. A wet wall is a repair problem for a week. After that it becomes a coverage problem, and coverage problems are won with documents, not buckets.
Louis P. Meyer, Esq.
Senior Attorney, Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A.
100 S. Ashley Drive, Suite 610, Tampa, FL 33602
Phone: 561-206-2949
Email: lmeyer@kpattorney.com
About the Author
Louis P. Meyer, Esq. is a Senior Attorney at Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A., where his practice focuses on first party property damage claims and personal injury cases across Florida, including water damage and plumbing leak claims for homeowners and property owners. He was selected to Florida Rising Stars in 2024, 2025, and 2026. He is bilingual in English and Spanish, writes the LouisTheLawyer publication on Substack, and hosts the podcast Off The Record by Louis Meyer. He holds an LL.M. from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, a J.D. from Whittier Law School, and a B.A. from UCLA, graduating with Honors. He was admitted to The Florida Bar on November 23, 2020, Bar No. 1024811. This page is general information about how water damage claims work in Florida. It is not legal advice about any specific claim or policy.
Louis P. Meyer, Esq., Senior Attorney, Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A., 100 S. Ashley Drive, Suite 610, Tampa, FL 33602. Phone: 561-206-2949. Email: lmeyer@kpattorney.com.
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